


Nothing That's Not Been Said

by commoncomitatus



Series: Colour And Light [2]
Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Communication, Gen, Misunderstandings, Muteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 15:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18943552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Continuation of my ill-advised Dæmon AU.  Wherein Monkey struggles with more than one kind of restraint, and gains a little insight in the process.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> May or may not make sense without having read the first part of the AU. I've tried to recount pertinent information where applicable, but I've never actually written anything like this before so... your guess is as good as mine?
> 
> Inspired by Monkey and Sandy's subplot in 1x03, and by my personal appreciation for getting them into trouble together.

**

Three days into the quest, Monkey shrugs out of his cloak, tosses it onto the ground and says, “I’m not wearing this stupid thing any more.”

Tripitaka, being rather occupied at that moment in arranging piles of wood for a fire, freezes where he stands, going deathly, dangerously still. He turns around slowly, as though terrified for his life, and stares with a kind of slack-jawed, wide-eyed horror, like Monkey just suggested that they make the evening meal out of human flesh and dæmon blood. Like he just said something unspeakable, something unthinkable. If the look on the little monk’s face wasn’t so serious, it might almost be comical.

As it is…

Well. Another day, another one of a million little ways in which Monkey will never understand how things work in this brave new world he’s found himself stuck in. He accepts the confusion with a shrug, and waits for Tripitaka to come to his senses and explain it.

Which he does. Explosively.

“Put it back!” The horror has overshadowed the fear by the time he finds his voice, twisting the words into a tight, furious command. “Monkey, if people find out what you are…”

“They’ll what? Kill me?” He laughs, flexing his muscles and swishing his tail, casually showing off all the myriad little differences between himself and others who might share his appearance, a normal monkey or an empty, soulless human. Pigsy might be content to roll around in the dirt like his namesake and the form he settled in, but Monkey is not. “Let them _try_.”

Pigsy, foraging for edible roots, lifts his head up from the dirt and grunts his agreement. “Isn’t that kind of the point of the little excursion?” he muses, cheerful but contemplative. “Making people see that dæmons aren’t the monsters they’ve spent five centuries thinking we are? Can’t very well do that, can we, while you’re keeping us hidden out of sight like some kind of dirty secret.”

Tripitaka makes a face. He can see their reasoning, Monkey knows, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy pill to have to swallow. A monk through and through, he never likes it when someone else makes a better point than him.

“It’s dangerous,” he says after a moment, like that’s any kind of argument.

Honestly, Monkey can only laugh. “So is trusting the pig guy to find our dinner,” he counters easily. “Hells, from what you keep telling us, this whole stupid quest is dangerous.”

“I… well, yes. But—”

“But nothing.” He gives the cloak a savage kick, angered by everything it represents. “At least let me face whatever monsters lie ahead as myself. Don’t I deserve that much?”

“It’s not monsters I’m worried about,” Tripitaka says quietly. “It’s humans.”

Sandy, curled up at his feet in the form of a silver-black water snake, goes very tense, then wordlessly hisses her agreement.

Monkey makes a point of ignoring her. He might be getting used to having her around, the weird little half-dæmon who never learned to speak or settle, but that doesn’t mean he has to like her. The muteness, the twitchy, nervous form-shifting, the lifeless colours of her aura… everything about her makes Monkey’s skin crawl, and he has no intention of letting her be a part of this conversation.

Not until she learns how to communicate, at least.

Tripitaka, paying no heed to Monkey’s obvious discomfort, stoops to stroke her head, his delicate fingertips brushing over the gleaming scales like they’re the most precious thing in the world, soothing and calming her by some deep-rooted instinct. Monkey grimaces at the sight, deeply discomfited and more than a little nauseous. It’s just another of the countless ways in which Sandy is unnatural and wrong; no self-respecting dæmon would accept physical contact from a human who wasn’t their own, much less take comfort from it. It makes him feel sick to look at them, and strangely angry, and so he turns away.

“I’ve never been afraid of humans,” he mutters at Tripitaka, trying to distract them both from the twisted little freak of nature. “And I don’t plan to start now. If they come at me, I want to be able to look them in the eye before I shut them down.”

“Bit presumptuous, that,” Pigsy chuckles, then swiftly clears his throat when Monkey turns to glare at him. “I mean, uh, admirable. Did I say ‘presumptuous’? Because I meant ‘admirable.’ They sound the same, see, and it’s easy for a pig dæmon to get confused…”

“Uh huh. Sure it is.” Still, he’s never been one to turn down a willing ally, so he lets the slight go for now, turning back to Tripitaka with his arms folded across his chest. “See? Even the easily-confused pig dæmon agrees with me.”

Tripitaka massages his temples. “Monkey…”

“I’m serious, monk.” He is, very much so, and he shows it with a flash of his eyes and an irritable swish of his tail. “I know you new-world humans don’t remember the way things are supposed to be, but we dæmons aren’t helpless just because we take the forms of animals.” He cuts another quick glance at Pigsy, sharpening his teeth into a smirk. “I’ll bet there’s not a human this side of the western continent he couldn’t body-slam to death if he had to.”

Pigsy snorts a flattered, affirmative laugh. Tripitaka, however, does not look amused at all.

“It’s not just you I’m worried about,” he says in a strange, hushed voice.

Monkey glances back at Sandy, even more grudgingly than before. She’s watching them, head cocked to one side, tongue flicking, visibly agitated. Monkey can’t hold her gaze for more than a second before he has to look away, nauseated by her sickly colours, her strange expression, every freakish part of her.

“That thing?” He rolls his eyes, willing himself to sound cocky instead of queasy. “She can take whatever form she likes. I mean, even now, who knows what kind of venom she’s hiding in those fangs? She could probably kill you with one—”

Sandy makes a distressed, strangled noise, and promptly turns into a tadpole.

Monkey growls his annoyance. “…never mind.”

Predictably, Tripitaka is horrified. He lets out a yelp, then scoops the stupid little thing up into his bare hands and deposits it — _her_ — into a nearby bucket of water. He’s seething when he turns back, angry and stupidly over-protective of the little abomination, and it makes Monkey’s hackles and temper rise. Hells, how he hates that weird little dæmon.

“She’d never hurt me,” Tripitaka tells him, firm but clearly upset. “Even if she could, she wouldn’t. I’d like to think you and Pigsy feel the same way.”

“Of course we do.” He feels a little insulted, quite frankly, that such a thing would need to be said. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what _is_ the point, Monkey?” The monk’s voice is rising with his temper, making him sound even younger than usual, strangely feminine and a little bit helpless. “Because however you try to phrase it, all I’m hearing is that you want to hurt people. And that’s not what our mission is about.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He yawns exaggeratedly, annoyed by all this monastic posturing. “Peace and love, right?”

“Yes!” Tripitaka takes a deep breath, steadying himself, then tries again, a little more patiently. “We’re here to remind people that dæmons are good, that humans need them, that we’ll never be truly complete without the other half of our souls. We’re not here to…” He grimaces, jaw going pale with frustration. “…to _body-slam_ anyone who doesn’t agree with us.”

Monkey forces back another smirk. “Not even if they body-slam us first?”

“Not even then.” Tripitaka massages his temples, looking drained and miserable. “Make fun of it if you like, but our mission is one of peace.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.” Monkey is getting frustrated now too, and he’s letting it show. His voice gets higher, tighter, until he’s almost as shrill as Tripitaka. Keen and screechy, he sounds much closer to the monkeys who share his form than the humans he’s spent so much of his life trying to mimic. “But it’s not going to work if we’re the only ones playing it that way. How much good do you think all that ‘peace and love’ stuff will do if they’re already throwing punches before we even open our mouths?”

It’s a good point, and they both know it. Tripitaka’s dark eyes grow even darker, a flicker like a threat, but he doesn’t press the issue any further. Priestly patience, perhaps, or else he just realises he doesn’t have a counter-argument. He’s the one who keeps insisting it’s too dangerous for Monkey to show his face for fear of angering the humans; he can’t very well turn around now and promise they’ll never have any reason to defend themselves.

Typical monk, Monkey thinks savagely, wanting everything his way but never willing to compromise or look at others’ points of view. Tripitaka wants his dæmon companions to just be like him, bowing and snivelling and playing the polite, respectful belly-crawling servant, but Monkey has never lived that way and he’s not about to start now.

Meanwhile, apparently giving up all hope of continuing to forage undisturbed, Pigsy sits back on his haunches and takes a long hard look at them both.

It’s a strange look for a dæmon of his size, a creature who normally seems so effortlessly stupid, and the way he’s positioned himself combined with the way he’s studying them makes him look strangely human. He’s got a contemplative, patient look on his face, entirely at odds with his size and form. Monkey is thrown for a moment to see him that way, until he remembers something the Master told him once about finding wisdom in unexpected places.

Pig dæmons are notoriously smart, he recalls now, as much as they look the opposite. At the time, Monkey had a hard time believing that, laughing and insisting he was much happier and much cleverer in his own form, as close to human as a dæmon can possibly get. Now, though, seeing the thoughtful frown on Pigsy’s face — curiosity and and patience, talents he admittedly lacks — he finds himself wondering what other nuances of form he’s missed out on by being born settled.

He’s always been what he is, exactly the same from the moment he came into being. It’s as impossible as the rest of him, true, but there it is: born whole, without a human body to connect to, he was already settled into his monkey form by the time he became aware of himself. He never knew the joy of self-discovery that comes to all young dæmons who can change their form at will, unearthing new truths about themselves and their human, discovering new shades of their bodies as their humans find fresh colours in their souls. He had no human to share those things with, and the form he has is the only one he’s ever known.

He wonders, briefly, how long it took Pigsy to settle in his final form, if there was a different one he’d favoured in his childhood, if he feels well-suited to being a pig. He wonders, too, how his human felt about it, if she thought it fitted her as well, if they were happy together after he settled, in the too-brief time before the Master died and everything changed for dæmons and humans alike.

It’s a sad, sobering thought, and one that Monkey has to force himself to shake off. He will not feel guilty for a crime he did not commit, no matter its consequences.

He does not let himself wonder about Sandy. In fact, he actively, consciously does _not_ wonder about her. Even just the passing notion makes him shudder down to his bones. Fully grown and yet still unsettled, flitting from form to form like it’s not weird and wrong, like _she’s_ not weird and wrong, twisted and unnatural in every corner of herself. He will not compare himself to a dæmon like that.

Unfair? Yes, definitely. He knows this, just as he knows that there’s nothing he can do about it. As someone who is more than a little unnatural himself, he knows he should have more patience with Sandy than he does, but the instincts that surge up in him when he looks at her are as overpowering as they are unexplainable. The sight of her makes him feel unclean and distorted, makes him want to jump headlong into the nearest river and scrub himself raw. It makes him want to do worse than that, in his darker moments, makes him look at the still-healing gash in her shoulder and wish he’d finished the job.

He doesn’t need Tripitaka to tell him that’s a cruel, horrible thing to think. He doesn’t even really understand it; she’s not that much worse than the other strange and unnatural things in this new world that has become his home. And yet, hard as he tries to force it down, the feeling is there, visceral and inescapable, every time he looks at her, making him want to shake her until she speaks, until she settles, until she—

He twitches, forcing himself to think of something else, and is grateful beyond words when Pigsy shakes himself out of his reverie and turns his bulky frame to Tripitaka.

“He’s right,” he tells the monk in a deep, rumbling voice. “It’s easy to preach the whole ‘make love, not war’ thing when you’re human, but we’re not. We’re freaks—” He says the word without inflection, seeming not to notice the way it makes Monkey recoil, the way it makes his fists spasm at his sides. “—and the laws of nature say we should’ve died out a long time ago, all three of us. The deck was pretty well stacked against us before we even started, you know?”

Tripitaka considers that for a long moment. He studies Pigsy, matching his thoughtful intensity, then looks at Monkey with weariness shadowing his eyes, and finally peers into the bucket where Sandy — back now in her water snake form — is sticking her head out of the water to stare at them. He’s still annoyed, Monkey can tell, but he loosens up a bit with each moment he looks at them. His companions, his friends. His dæmons, sort of, each in their own unique way.

“Maybe,” he says, at long last. “But that’s still no excuse for violence. We can’t preach peace and love between humans and dæmons, then turn around and hurt anyone who disagrees.”

“We can if they do it first,” Monkey shoots back. “No-one’s saying we should throw ourselves at the first human who looks at us sideways. But if they’re going to start coming at us—”

“Which they will,” Pigsy agrees, sliding smoothly back into the conversation before Monkey can get carried away by his passion. “There’s all sorts of folks out there who are going to want to hurt us, or worse. Some for being what we are, some for what we’re trying to say and do. A lot of old prejudices, a lot of reasons for people not to want to let them go or give them up.” He locks eyes with Tripitaka, then, like there’s no-one else in the world; he’s as passionate as Monkey in his own way, if a little gentler about it. “It’s going to get ugly, whether we like it or not. You can’t just close your eyes, because it goes against your teachings, and pretend that it won’t.”

Tripitaka doesn’t seem any happier to hear it from Pigsy than from Monkey, but at least it’s mostly articulate coming from him. Monkey has many — _many_ — talents, but he’ll be the first to admit that diplomacy has never been one of them. Even he has to concede, if somewhat grudgingly, that the soft-spoken pig dæmon makes a better negotiator.

After a few moments spent taking it all in, absorbing it and rejecting it and reabsorbing it and finally, hesitantly, accepting it, Tripitaka turns back to Monkey. He’s still very serious, but not quite so blind with anger now, and he has his frustration well and truly heeled; Monkey isn’t sure whether he should be relieved or disappointed by that.

“This is exactly why you need to stay hidden,” Tripitaka says to him, trying to match Pigsy’s talent for speaking clearly and evenly, with some measure of success. “Because the world is dangerous, and its people even more so. Because they are going to want you dead or hurt or worse, and we’re not in any position to fight them just yet.”

“Sure we are,” Monkey retorts, flexing his muscles and preening a little. “You might be a coward, monk, but I’m not, and I’m not afraid to do what—”

“It’s not about being a coward!” Tripitaka snaps. “It’s about remembering what’s actually important here.” Rough-edged and a little hard, he sounds like a schoolteacher lecturing a particularly insolent student; it does not make Monkey more inclined to hear him out. “Your existence matters, Monkey. You’re the reason the world turned out this way, and you’re the one who’s going to help us make it right again. You can’t do that while your first thoughts are about violence and hurting people. Once you’ve learned to show some restraint, maybe…”

Monkey scoffs. “Right. _I’m_ the one who has to show restraint. _Me_. The dæmon who’s done nothing wrong. Not the humans who want to murder me. That makes perfect sense.”

“It’d be nice if _everyone_ showed some restraint,” Pigsy grunts, shooting a pointed look at monk and Monkey both.

So saying, he lumbers back to his feet, squares his massive shoulders, and goes back to his foraging like he never stopped at all.

Tripitaka ignores him. Monkey kind of suspected he would; he does not take kindly to being told he’s not right about everything. Not used to it, maybe, or possibly it’s just a side-effect of being raised by monks, taught to become just like them. Monkey has never met a holy man who didn’t believe he knew all the secrets of the known world.

“Monkey.” Tripitaka’s voice is getting lower now, like a threat, like he really thinks his tiny soulless body stands a chance against a dæmon as powerful and smart as Monkey. “Put your cloak back on. _Now_.”

Monkey crosses his arms, taking a stand both metaphorical and physical. “I don’t feel like it.”

“Put it back on,” Tripitaka hisses. “Or I swear, I will—”

“You’ll want? Lecture me some more?” He rolls his eyes, a little too casual to be really convincing. “Terrifying.”

“ _Monkey_ …”

Monkey bares his teeth. He’s more than happy to make this a fight if he has to, if that’s what it takes to get his way. He’s probably just proving the monk’s point, he knows, leaping to confrontation and aggression as a first solution to even the simplest problems, but at this point he really doesn’t care. The cloak is a shackle, a symbolic prison, no less unjust than the rock that held him for five centuries. He doesn’t care if it’s stupid, if it’s arrogant or ‘lacking restraint’; he will never again be bound in a cage of someone else’s making.

Bad enough that he has to live here in the first place, in this world full of humans who hate him and dæmons who blame him; he’s not going to be forced to hide who he is on top of that. He won’t be told by some soulless, empty shell of a human that he has to slither around on his belly, hiding his face and his heart and himself, hiding like a—

Snake.

Like—

Sandy.

Jumping out of the bucket, serpent-lithe and graceful, as if in response to his thoughts.

She’s anxious, upset by their rising voices and tempers, but there’s a shrewd sort of cleverness in the way she moves that Monkey would have frankly assumed was beyond her. 

She slinks over to the cloak in question, clearly recognising it as the cause of all the tension, and then — seemingly in a conscious effort to put an end to the bickering — promptly curls up on the damn thing and goes to sleep.

Tripitaka stares, anger bleeding out into betrayal as his mouth falls open. “Sandy!”

Monkey, of course, only smirks. He’s not grateful to the little abomination, of course, but he’ll take what victory he can, even from such an unpleasant source.

“It’s all wet now,” he points out, feigning disappointment. “And besides, I’m not wearing anything _she’s_ touched.”

Tripitaka still looks completely and utterly devastated. High on his ill-gotten win, Monkey finds it far more amusing than he should.

“Does _anyone_ care about our mission,” Tripitaka laments, “or is it just me?”

“I’ll care,” Pigsy chimes in, merrily rolling an army of roots towards the fire with his snout. “Just as soon as you get these cooking.”

Tripitaka sighs, throws up his hands, and does as he’s told.

*

With nightfall comes a heavy silence, and unwanted proof that Tripitaka might have a point after all.

Monkey would never admit to having a problem with restraint or controlling his temper or the rest of it — he was raised, after all, by the most restrained, composed human he’s ever met — but he did not count on being as unsettled as he is in this awful new world. He did not count on being so thrown and disturbed by every little thing, horrified by the lack of colour and light, the soulless humans walking about like they’re not half-dead, his strange dæmon companions, the only ones in the whole damn world. He did not count on everything being so exhausting, so heavy and frustrating and wrong, bearing down on him like a weight he can’t shrug off.

He certainly didn’t count on being betrayed by his own dreams.

He doesn’t actually know for sure if dæmons need sleep, or if it’s simply one more habit he picked up in his time with the Master. It’s not something he ever really thought much about before now; he spent so much of his life in the old days trying to emulate humans as much as possible, trying to become like them, to prove that he was more than the mindless monkey whose form had chosen him at birth, it was second nature to emulate them in this as well. He followed the Master in everything, taking his meals and going to bed when he did, and he never once stopped to wonder whether or not it was actually necessary.

Pigsy certainly seems to think it is. He eats and sleeps like those things bring the only joy he has left in his life. And maybe they do, at that; after all those empty years with no company but a few farm animals and the fading memory of a human who rejected him even in death, Monkey suspects there’s little left in the world that truly makes him happy. He is lazy and slovenly and cares for nothing but his own gratification, and yet somehow Monkey finds he can’t really resent him for holding fast to what meagre joy he can find in a world that would strip him of everything he is and was.

He’s already fast asleep when Monkey stretches out to do the same, sprawled comfortably on his side in front of the fire and snoring rhythmically. Restful and perfectly at peace, he sleeps like there’s no danger in the world, like they didn’t just spend the whole damn evening fighting about whether they should be allowed to defend themselves or not. He sleeps like the dead, not a care in the world, like not even the hardiest human could ever harm him.

Fair enough, Monkey supposes grudgingly. If he had Pigsy’s leathery porcine hide or his massive size, he’d probably sleep like a baby too.

He doesn’t, though. He is edgy and nervous, and with good reason, according to the monk. It takes him a long time to finally fall asleep, and when he does it’s not restful in the least.

Before he went into the rock, he never dreamed at all. Never gave much thought to the idea, never questioned if it was normal or not, if dreaming was something dæmons were even capable of. He was always unique, among dæmons and humans both; whatever he learned about dreaming from either side, it probably wouldn’t apply to him, anyway. And what did it matter anyway, he’d thought at the time. Why waste his time thinking about something he couldn’t change?

Maybe all that time in the rock has done something to him, though, made him into something new, something a little more human, a little more whole than he was, granted him the gift of dreaming like the humans he worked so hard to emulate. Maybe…

Then again, maybe he just has more in his head now to dream about.

He’s dreamed a handful of times since Tripitaka brought him out of the rock, exotic and exciting. Colour, so much colour everywhere, rippling rainbows of the world that once was; they dance on the air in his mind, caught the light, drifting away when he reached for them, forever just out of reach. Mocking him with memories of what he’s lost, a world where he almost belonged and a human that was almost his own.

They’re good dreams, usually, at least until he wakes and looks around and watches the colours fade to grey and ash and nothing. Good dreams, until he remembers that that’s all they are.

But there are bad ones too. Flashes of fear and grief, lightning-strikes of pain slashing through the colour, turning it to red and then black, sucking the life and the soul out of everything, twisting, transforming the old world into the new one, leaving him helpless, confused, _alone_ …

Tonight is bad. But it’s a different kind of bad. Colourful but without beauty, without heart, without hope.

He’s back at the Jade Mountain, his happy home for so many years, only it’s not happy there any more. The Master is with him, not as they were together but as he was in his final moments. Fading, gasping, _dying_ , his body limp and still under Monkey’s hands, warm human blood burning through his palms, sticking to his fur, his skin, and no matter how hard he scrubs he can’t wash it away.

It feels wrong. For the first time in his lift, it feels _wrong_. The contact, the blood, everything, like a sickness in his soul, like an abomination, a horror, something unspeakable. Monkey never felt any shame or doubt about touching the Master when he was alive, but in the moment of his death he could not hide from the truth any longer: however deep the bond between them went, however potent and powerful and pure, he was not his dæmon. They were not connected, not whole or one or real, and they never should have touched. It was wrong, he was wrong, they were wrong, _wrong_ —

He jerks awake gasping, hands shaking. He can still feel the body growing cold under his fingertips, the blood burning hot on his palms. For a moment he feels too sick to look down at them, afraid of seeing what he knows isn’t there.

Stupid, he knows. It was just a dream; the blood washed away five hundred years ago, the body long since decayed. It’s all in the past, long gone and buried a dozen lifetimes ago; it cannot hurt him any more. And yet, even as he knows this to be true, still the echo of it lodges like a barb inside his head, inside his skin, inside his heart, in all the cold, shaking places where he worked so hard to making himself seem human.

He sits up slowly, still a little disoriented, and wipes his hands on the grass. Trembling, convulsive, trying to clean them of the stains that don’t exist, trying and failing to catch his breath. The world around him seems even darker than usual, black flecked with ashen grey, and it takes him a long moment to remember why, to recall that he is in a new world now, one where the air is still and silent, where the shadows are colourless, where this is the way things are supposed to be.

Swallowing hard, he drags his still-shaking hands down over his face. Remembers how to breathe and does it, as slow and steady as he can, until his pulse is steady as well. Then, vision slowly adjusting to the dark, he looks up—

Straight into a pair of wide, unblinking eyes.

Monkey topples over, crashing to the ground with a muffled yell, one hand clapped over his mouth to stifle the noise and keep from waking the others.

“What in the…” But even as he says it, the answer makes itself apparent, and he exhales all his panic in a seething, rage-fuelled sigh. “… _You_.”

Sandy, the troublesome little rodent.

A literal rodent this time: she’s shifted into a sewer rat for the night. Still curled up in the creases of his cloak, she seems comfortable in that form, no doubt thinking of the miserable darkness of her former home. She’s staring up at him with those big, unnaturally pale eyes, head cocked to one side as if seeking answers to some wordless question. Like she really thinks he has any way of understanding her, or any interest in trying.

He growls and flashes his teeth, using a language he’s sure even she will comprehend. He’s angry and upset and feels more vulnerable than he would ever care to admit; he hates that he was caught in a moment of such weakness, and hates all the more that he was caught by _her_.

Tripitaka, he might not have minded so much. At least the monk has seen, to some small extent, how traumatised he is by this awful colourless world, how much of a jolt it was for him to wake up and find everything so completely transformed; he might understand this as well. But Sandy doesn’t understand anything, and even if she did her very existence sets his teeth on edge. He’d want her gone, even on a good day; here and now, in the darkest depths of the night and the aftermath of a nightmare, her uninvited presence is too much to bear.

“Go away!” he hisses, forcing down the urge to do something more violent, the inexplicable primal instinct that rises up in his chest any time he comes face-to-face with her strangeness. “Go back to sleep!”

She does no such thing, of course. What did he expect?

Instead, whiskers twitching, she scrambles up off the cloak, takes a corner of the fabric between her sharp little teeth, and drags the whole thing over to him, inch by humiliating inch.

Monkey raises a brow, annoyed and amused in equal measure. Her intentions are good, he has no doubt — she thinks he’s cold, or else she can sense he’s upset, and she’s trying to share the only thing she has that might offer him some warmth or comfort — but as always she’s failing to see that her presence is a problem, that simply existing makes her offensive to him. A well-meaning attempt at kindness doesn’t make him feel less exposed or vulnerable, doesn’t make him less angry or upset or frightened, and it certainly doesn’t make him more willing to engage with her.

“I said _go away_ ,” he snarls, feeling his patience fraying more with every inch she draws closer. “Leave me alone! This is none of your business, you little weirdo.”

She doesn’t say anything. No surprise there; she never says anything — can’t actually speak, if Tripitaka is to be believed — and that’s a big part of the problem. Not that Monkey particularly wants to connect with her, but her muteness makes it damn near impossible to even try. Even now, she doesn’t try to communicate, no doubt sensing it would be futile, just drops the cloak at his feet and nudges it towards him, eyes big and hopeful, like this really is the best she can do.

Maybe it is; Monkey doesn’t know, and he doesn’t much care either. He clenches his jaw and growls at her again, a warning and a threat all at once. It takes a considerable effort to keep from clenching his fists too, to keep from—

He closes his eyes, breathing steadily through his nose. Counts to ten, and reminds himself that Tripitaka will be very disappointed if he wakes up in the morning and finds one of his dæmons dead at the hands of another.

“Listen,” he snaps, when he’s got himself back under control; he keeps his voice low, not wanting to wake the others and also in a vain attempt to keep the spite out of it. “I just had a really lousy dream, okay? And the last thing in the world I want to see right now is your weird, creepy face staring at me and trying to play nice.”

She actually blinks at that, for the first time, like she’s trying and failing to comprehend what he’s saying. It’s not her fault if she doesn’t, Monkey knows, not her fault that even the most basic communication is beyond her, but knowing that doesn’t grant him any more patience. He sighs, grits his teeth, and tries again.

“I don’t want to play nice,” he tells her firmly. “And I definitely don’t want to play nice with _you_. Do you understand, you little pest? Can you get any part of this through your head?”

Sandy’s ears droop a little — apparently she can, at least enough to know she’s being insulted — but she still doesn’t back off. She drags the cloak closer still, until it’s nudging his boot, like she’s giving serious thought to draping the damn thing over him herself. Like she thinks he’s incapable, like she thinks he needs taking care of. And by _her_ , of all people; she can’t even speak, but somehow she thinks she can take care of him. If he wasn’t so angry, Monkey might find it amusing.

He growls again, showing his teeth. His temper is flaring, vivid and vibrant and dangerously close to violent, a crimson haze brought to light and life by the memory of his nightmare, the blood on his hands and under his skin, the helplessness and the horror of watching the only human — the only _anything_ — he ever truly cared about bleeding and fading and dying under his hands, of feeling their bond snap and die too, as if it was never there at all.

His chest hurts; he feels ragged and raw, the world sharp and serrated all around him, like a blade cutting close to the bone, the lack of colour making him feel disjointed and sick. It’s a permanent print on his heart and his soul, reminding him again and again and again that he doesn’t belong here, that he is just as much of an abomination as the twisted dæmon in front of him, the voiceless abomination who can’t speak and never settled and doesn’t even know not to let a human touch her.

Sandy stares at him for a moment, body quivering nervously. His temper is not something to be taken lightly, this she knows all too well; their first meeting is a clear reminder for them both. He’s about half a breath away from lurching at her and doing something that Tripitaka will definitely make him regret in the morning, and she’s looking at him like she understands that, if nothing else, like a part of her is scared of him — and rightly so — but a bigger part still wants to try and help.

He sits up slightly straighter. Eyes on her shoulder, healing but visibly still sore, he cracks his knuckles. It’s a clear threat, one that even she should have no trouble grasping.

Except she’s looking at his face, not his hands. Eyes wide, whiskers twitching, she sits up, balancing carefully on her hind legs, and—

 _Squeaks_.

High and chaotic, the noise drills into his ears like claws shrieking on wet stone, a frenzied flurry of chattering, chittering gibberish that makes absolutely no sense to him.

And why would it? He’s not a damn rat.

But then, neither is she.

He wonders, sickened and a little sympathetic at the same time, if she actually realises that. She is so strange in so many different ways, so unnatural and twisted and discordant, and he knows so little about whatever surreal turns her life took to make her this way. Maybe she’s become so confused over the years that she really, truly believes she becomes the creatures whose forms she takes. Maybe she really doesn’t know, doesn’t understand what it is to be a dæmon. Maybe…

He shakes his head. “You know you’re not, right?”

Sandy only blinks at him. Once, twice, and then she starts squeaking again, even more urgently than before.

“Knock it off!” he snaps, glaring her into silence. “You’re not actually a rat. Do you actually understand that? You’re not a rat or a snake or an otter or a tadpole. Which, by the way, has to be the stupidest form I’ve ever seen.”

He pauses briefly as her whiskers twitch, like she’s offended but can’t really grasp why. Then, when the lack of comprehension makes itself apparent once more, he sighs and presses uselessly on.

“You’re a _dæmon_.” The word echoes, almost loud enough to wake the others. “Not a rat, not a tadpole. A _dæmon_. The living embodiment of some poor unfortunate human’s soul. Do you know what that means? Can that tiny little brain of yours take this in, or do you need me to spell it out for you?”

She chitters at him some more, louder, growing almost frantic. The fur is standing up all over her body now, and she looks very agitated. If it was Tripitaka or Pigsy, Monkey might show some pity and let the matter drop, but she’s not.

She’s not a pig dæmon, settled and comfortable and deceptively wise, and she’s not a soulless human monk, kind and compassionate to a fault. She’s a messed-up wreck of a thing that doesn’t understand what it is and expects him to break everything down for her, and he is long past the end of his patience, past his breaking point with her weirdness and her muteness, her unnatural behaviour and her—

 _Her_.

Just… all of her.

“Look,” he forces out, the words distorted by his temper. “I don’t know what happened to your human. I don’t know why he’s not with you any more or why you ended up the way you did, but it doesn’t matter. Not being connected, not having a human… it doesn’t make you less a dæmon. Do you get that?”

She blinks. Eyes wide, they seem to glimmer in the dark, as though with tears. Monkey swallows, feeling a burst of something nameless in his chest, and turns away.

“You’re a dæmon,” he says again, slower, tighter. “You have to know that. I mean, you _have to_. So stop acting like you don’t. Stop acting like you really think you’re a rat or a tadpole or all the rest of it. There’s few enough of us left in this screwed-up world, I don’t need some weird little pest pretending that she’s something else. Learn to behave like a proper dæmon. Learn how to _talk_ , at least…”

He hears her breath catch, as silent as the wind. She shifts back into her water snake form, flicking her tongue and hissing hopefully, like she really thinks that’s an improvement.

It’s not. His temper flares even higher, frustrated at the lack of communication, the lack of comprehension.

“No,” he snaps. “No, stop that. I mean, learn to talk _properly_. Like a dæmon, like a human, like someone or something that’s normal.” He waves a hand. “A sentence. A word. Anything. For the love of…”

But he might as well be talking to the wall, for all the comprehension she shows.

“Fine!” He throws up his hands. “Then go away and leave me alone. If you can’t even be bothered to try, just go. Because this—” He gestures vaguely, taking in all of her. “—is a waste of my damn time. So get better, or get lost.”

That, she understands.

She flinches, shivering all over, like he just shoved his fingers into the wound on her shoulder and ripped it back open. Her eyes are even bigger than normal, their preternatural paleness reflecting the dull moon above, and as Monkey raises a fist to threaten her again she jolts back to herself. Scurrying back and out of reach, she transforms into a water beetle, all trembling antennae and shimmering carapace; her scrambling little legs are a blur, carrying her halfway across the camp in the blink of an eye.

Watching her flee, Monkey yanks up the cloak and tosses it after her, letting the impotent violence carry off a little of his anger. “And take that stupid thing with you!”

It lands heavily, smothering her new tiny form like an avalanche swallowing a pinecone. His mission accomplished, Monkey immediately turns his back on cloak and dæmon both, arms crossed with petty, vindictive satisfaction.

Finally, in the blessed silence that follows, he lies back down. Curled up on his side to broadcast his desire for solitude, he tries without success to relax.

Not that he expects much of that. After his dream, he’s all but lost any interest he might have had in sleep, and even with her physical form buried under a tonne of fabric he can still sense Sandy’s presence behind him, like an itch inside his skin, like something unnatural and uncanny trying to take hold of his thoughts.

He clings to the anger, the disgust he feels when he looks at her, the sick wrongness that permeates every part of her. He holds it close and hard, the spite and the discomfort, because it’s less painful to think about how much he hates her than opening himself up to think about the other thing, the love and loss still echoing from his dream, the shadows clouding the Master’s lifeless human eyes, the helplessness in knowing it’s already happened.

Small wonder, he thinks bitterly, if he lacks restraint and patience and whatever else. Small wonder that his temper is short, that his first instinct is to be wild and violent, to wreak havoc and hurt the people who would try to hurt him first, the people who have hurt him already by taking away his human and remaking the world in their sordid image. Small wonder that he doesn’t want to hide himself away, that he wants to stand up proud and tall and himself, not cower in a cloak like some worthless little rat dæmon.

Tripitaka has no idea what that feels like. All he thinks about is the mission, peace and love and things that will never work in a world that isn’t ready for them. He can’t see the pain Monkey feels every time he looks around and remembers where he is, when he sees this nightmare of a world and is reminded again and again and again that it’s not for him. He doesn’t see how much it pains him to look at a damaged abomination like Sandy, knowing she should be like him but seeing nothing familiar at all in her pale, hollow eyes. He doesn’t understand how it feels to look around at a world that is wrong in every corner, and know that he’s the reason why.

Maybe it’s a fitting punishment, Monkey thinks sadly, being stuck here like this. He may not have killed the Master himself, but he wasn’t able to save him either. Maybe this is his penance for not being good enough. A failure of a dæmon reborn into a failure of a world.

Maybe he does belong here, after all.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

He wakes with the dawn, to the colourless half-light of the rising sun and Pigsy jabbing him in the side with his snout.

“Up and at ’em!” He sounds entirely too awake for the early hour, and far too cheerful for someone so lazy. “Our fearless leader wants to talk to you.”

Monkey kicks him in the mouth, then promptly rolls over, covering his head with his arms.

He’s vaguely aware of Pigsy’s pained grunt, of the noisy way he turns and stalks away, huffing and puffing under his breath, but he blocks it out as best he can. He slept poorly, even after he finally chased off the dregs of his nightmare, and spent half the night trying to deal with a troublesome pest who wouldn’t leave him alone. He’s earned the right, he thinks, to steal an extra couple of minutes in bed before the world starts turning around him again, before Tripitaka starts lecturing him about restraint and keeping his handsome face covered like some sort of criminal.

Sadly, if somewhat predictably, he doesn’t get the chance. He’s just closing his eyes again, embracing the peace and quiet, when a booted foot lodges itself between his ribs and a high, human voice yells, “Monkey!”

And that, it seems, is the end of that.

Monkey can fight many things, even with his eyes closed, even half-asleep — hells, on a good day, even fully asleep — but after last night’s disagreement he knows better than to make one of those things Tripitaka. And so, making no attempt to shroud his annoyance, he stretches, yawns loudly, and sits up.

“Problem, Your Royal Monkjesty?”

Tripitaka is glaring down at him, dark eyes glimmering with unexpected vehemence. Still colourless, still lifeless, as all humans are in this new world, but Monkey has to admit the passion is a good look on him. It makes him look more real — at least, more like a kind of human Monkey would recognise, the kind who live and breathe and let themselves feel things — and that, despite his obvious fury, actually sets Monkey’s mind a bit at ease.

Hands on his hips, nostrils flaring, Tripitaka demands, “What did you _do_?”

It’s a good question, Monkey thinks groggily. He blinks a handful of times, trying to process the hundred or more potential answers, then, risking a cocky little smirk, he says, “You’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

His charm, boundless though it is, seems to be wasted on Tripitaka, whose expression doesn’t soften even a little. He looks him squarely in the eye, still flashing fury, and says, “Sandy.”

It doesn’t make things any clearer, though it does have the unwitting side-effect of making Monkey angry as well as half-asleep. He tests the name on his tongue, tries to swallow it down and finds he can’t, then rolls his shoulders and feigns carelessness.

“What’s the little rodent done now?”

Tripitaka’s expression hardens to solid steel. “She’s gone.”

“She’s…” He frowns, coming more awake. “Wait, what?”

“ _Gone_ , Monkey.” His voice is flat, belying the heat behind his eyes. “She’s _gone_.”

That makes no sense. Monkey turns it over a few times in his head but can’t make it any less ridiculous. He spreads his arms, still not sure what Tripitaka expects him to do about it, and says, “She can’t be gone.” 

“She is.”

“Are you sure?” For once, he’s content to let himself sound as confused as he feels. “Maybe she’s just hiding out somewhere? Licking her wounds or sulking, whatever she does when she’s not bugging—” The word brings to mind her most recent form, and his indifference fades just a little. “Uh, did you check under your boot?”

“…what?”

Monkey clears his throat and turns his face away, feeling just a little bit guilty now. “It’s just… well, the last time I saw her, she was some kind of crawling insect thing. Small, squishable, you know…”

He trails off, letting the implication speak for itself.

Tripitaka, rather understandably, looks absolutely horrified, his warm skin blanching a deathly shade of pale. Monkey feels another twinge of shame, an unpleasant kicking in his chest, but try as he might he can’t bring himself to worry about the stupid dæmon. The monk, possibly — he cares about her rather more than a human should for a dæmon not their own — but every time he thinks of Sandy, he can’t help thinking, cold and just slightly pitying, that maybe it would be best for everyone if someone really did put her out of her misery by stepping on her.

Unfortunately, however, that’s not as likely as he’d have the little monk believe.

“Don’t get your robes in a knot,” Pigsy chimes in, shattering the delusion with a sardonic snort. “You can’t kill an unsettled dæmon that way. She would’ve shifted to a bigger form as soon as she felt the weight.” And just like that, it’s his turn to look uncomfortable. “That is… uh, assuming she’s got the brains to.”

“She’s not stupid,” Tripitaka grits out, no less angry. “Just because she’s not like you and Monkey… just because she’s quiet…”

Monkey huffs. “It’s not _just_ because she’s quiet,” he points out. One look at Tripitaka’s face, however, tells him now is not the time to dwell on that, so he lets the subject drop and switches breezily to another tack. “Maybe she went for a swim in the river? I mean, she spent half the night as a tadpole, maybe she just wanted to—”

“She’s not in the river,” Tripitaka says, making it clear from his tone that he’s already checked there, and probably more than once. He levels Monkey with a hard, appraising look, just shy of a scowl. “Did you upset her again?”

Monkey bristles at that, hackles rising. He takes particular offence at ‘again’, like Tripitaka thinks he’s made it his personal mission to antagonise the little little troublemaker, like he enjoys it. Like _she’s_ not the one who kept trying to bother _him_ , like he wasn’t the one who just wanted to be left alone for five damn minutes.

He hates the way Tripitaka dotes on her, the way he refuses to believe anything anyone else says against her. Hates the way he treats her like she’s something rare and precious, like they share a bond or whatever, just because she lets him touch her, just because she can’t speak and won’t connect with anyone else, just because she acts like he’s _her_ human…

He doesn’t really realise he’s started growling until Pigsy hauls his big body between them, eyes narrowed, thoughtful and typically quiet. He nudges Monkey’s hip with his head, like he’s trying to bring him back from the brink; not that he’d admit it out loud or anything, but it’s not wholly ineffectual.

“Take it easy,” he says, a low murmur, for Monkey’s ears only. “He’s just worried about her, that’s all.”

Monkey nods, clenching his teeth. The gentle encouragement grounds him a little, in spite of himself, and it helps him to keep a mostly even tone when he finally trusts himself to speak to Tripitaka.

“ _She_ upset _me_ ,” he tells him, heated but not as belligerent as he wants to be. “I told the little abomination to go away. It’s not my fault she wouldn’t listen.”

He assumes — naively, it seems — that will be the end of it, assumes the blame will return to where it should and that Tripitaka will stop looking at him like he’s single-handedly responsible for the death of every last dæmon that has come and gone in the last five centuries, Monkey has enough unwitting guilt on his shoulders already; he doesn’t need more accusation levelled at him from the one human in this worthless new world who actually seems to care about him.

The accusation doesn’t fade, though, and it’s certainly not the end of it. Tripitaka narrows his eyes, scowling up at Monkey like he’s somehow made everything worse, and for a moment Monkey doesn’t understand.

Then—

“You did _what_?”

Then he does.

Tripitaka’s eyes are blazing, more dangerous than any wildfire. Monkey knows that he would never actually raise a hand, not against him or anyone else — a monk is still a monk, however angry or upset — but that’s not much comfort when faced with the force of it; if he ever decided to put down his robes and books and take up arms instead, Monkey thinks the little monk could fell a continent or two just by glaring at them. Not a comforting thought, especially given the current situation, and so he takes a hasty, nervous step back.

“What?” His voice cracks a little; he covers it quickly with a too-casual cough. “It was the middle of the night, and she wouldn’t leave me alone. I asked nicely—” Not completely true, but Tripitaka doesn’t need to know that. “—but she wouldn’t listen. What was I supposed to do? Just sit there and take it, in case I hurt her stupid feelings?”

Tripitaka opens his mouth, then closes it again with a sigh.

“Of course not,” he says, very quietly. “But you should have woken me up. Let me deal with her instead. You know she doesn’t always understand…”

He trails off, shaking his head. He’s no less angry, Monkey can tell, but he’s trying to rein it in a bit now; even he has to admit that Sandy can be annoying, that she is trying and draining and difficult to handle, and all the more so to a dæmon who is already struggling to deal with every other part of a difficult, trying, annoying world. Patience has always been the great virtue of holy men, but it seems to take all of Tripitaka’s resolve to hold onto it now, breathing deeply and slowly, like his feelings are waging war with his common sense, with what he knows to be true and fair.

“They’re not the best match,” Pigsy offers lightly, trying in his usual way to defuse the situation with observational humour. “She needs a lot of patience, and he doesn’t have any.” Monkey smirks his agreement, aware of the fact that it’s not intended as a compliment but pretending to take it as one anyway. “Maybe we should… I don’t know, shove them in separate corners for the rest of the journey? Keep them away from each other?”

Monkey knows he’s only joking, but the idea fills him with more hope than it likely should. “Yes,” he says, a little too eagerly. “Please.”

Tripitaka ignores that. He’s still frowning at Monkey, still trying to be patient despite all his instincts to the contrary. “What, exactly, did you say to her?”

Something in his tone, the quiet judgement and mistrust, even now, grates against Monkey’s nerves. It makes him defensive and moody in a way he probably shouldn’t be, a way he knows is counterproductive. The monk is just worried, he knows, concerned about the weird little dæmon under his protection; he thinks Monkey scared her away, and maybe he did. The interrogation is understandable, given the situation, it really is.

But then, hasn’t restraint always been Monkey’s problem? Isn’t that exactly what Tripitaka was telling him last night? And he has already spent five hundred years suffering punishment for something he didn’t do; he has no intention of rolling over and playing dead again, not for some twisted backwards little dæmon who can’t even tell her side of the story.

“I told her what _you_ should have told her a long time ago,” he tells the monk, allowing his voice to rise ever so slightly. “That she’s not right, that she’s weird and wrong. That she should learn how to be better, how to be _normal_ , or she should just…”

He stops, flushing furiously, but it’s too late for damage control now. Tripitaka has heard it, and he’s furious.

“Monkey,” he says in a deadly voice. “Did you tell her to _leave_?”

“Uh…” It’s more of a challenge than he’d care to admit, holding onto his arrogance and not letting himself sound as guilty as he suddenly feels. “I mean, no! Of course not!”

“Monkey…”

He sighs. “I just told her to go aw— I mean, to leave me _alone_. It’s not my fault if she’s too stupid to understand the difference, is it?” He puts his hands on his hips, annoyed that her failings are somehow his fault. “Maybe if you actually taught the freakish little thing how to communicate properly…”

Tripitaka rears back at that, looking for a long, heart-stopping moment like he’s about to lash out and strike him down. He doesn’t, of course, but Monkey has a feeling that’s more a product of natural revulsion, not wanting to touch a dæmon, than any peaceful priestly leanings.

“If she’s hurt…” he grits out at last, gravel-edged and just a little hoarse. “If she got hurt because you told her she’s not ‘normal’ enough…”

“I’m sure the little pest is just fine,” Monkey mutters, rolling his eyes. “Even if there was anything dangerous around here, which there isn’t, she could turn into a dragon if she wanted to.”

That’s true, and it’s another part of the problem. That she could do such a thing without a second thought, that it’s not considered strange or wrong, that saying it out loud makes Tripitaka relax instead of recoil… it’s not right and it’s not normal, and it drives Monkey to distraction that he is the only one who seems to realise it.

Tripitaka thinks he’s sensitive to stuff like this because of the time he spent in the rock, because he slept through all the changes to the world and the people in it. Five hundred years, and here he is, reborn into a world that makes no sense, a world so completely different from the one he remembers that it might as well be another universe entirely. It would be enough to confuse anyone, enough to make even the Master lose his cool and scrabble for any little thing that seemed the least bit familiar. For Monkey, who has never been as calm or composed as the Master, it feels like he’s been thrown head-first into white-water rapids, churning and carrying him along, cold and wet and lost.

Maybe that is a part of why he’s so repulsed by Sandy. Maybe it really is just the hellish nightmare she represents: this stupid mess of a world, and all the ways his failures have turned it into the twisted thing it is.

Maybe. But he really, really doesn’t think so.

Pigsy lived through all the changes in the world, and he seems normal enough. A little traumatised, sure enough, but who wouldn’t be after spending a few centuries scrabbling about with the pigs and the cattle? He’s been alone and human-free for who knows how long, lost and only half-alive but still the sight of him doesn’t make Monkey’s skin crawl, and even with no human body his aura still looks like a normal dæmon’s.

He hasn’t lost sight of what he is and what it means. He might act like a real pig sometimes, might have fun pretending to be one, in much the same way that Monkey enjoys emulating and shadowing humans, but it’s not the same as when Sandy sits and stares and tries to speak in rat- or snake- or fish-language. Pigsy is a dæmon, and he knows it. He doesn’t claim to be anything else. He understands. He—

He should know enough to see the difference, to feel the same discomfort as Monkey does around the unnatural little wretch. Surely he sees it too, the sickly pallour of her aura, the nerve-grating wrongness in her behaviour. Surely he…

Monkey turns to him, narrowing his eyes. “What do you think?” he asks, surprised by how much he cares, all of a sudden, about the lazy pig dæmon’s opinion.

Pigsy grunts his confusion. “I think if you two are going to keep arguing about this,” he says, without a trace of irony or humour, “you should get a fire going so I can have some breakfast.”

“I mean about _her_ ,” Monkey snaps, impatient.

“Eh?” He scrunches up his snout, as if in deep thought. “I think she’s not here.”

Monkey grinds his teeth. “Okay, but if she _was_ —”

“And I think,” Pigsy presses on, ignoring him, “that you’re not likely to get her back by standing around bickering about it.”

Tripitaka’s face contorts, anguish overriding the anger and putting an end to the conversation.

He doesn’t say anything more, but the look he turns on Monkey is almost enough to make him forget that he’s supposed to be angry too. It’s a gutting, painful sort of a look, especially on a human who is so rooted in peace and compassion. Grief and panic, the faintest trace of guilt, like a parent fretting over a missing child.

His eyes are wide when they lock with Monkey’s, almost pleading now, and he doesn’t need to voice his feelings for Monkey to hear them, or for him to sigh his resignation.

“You want _me_ to go and look for her,” he mutters, “don’t you?”

Tripitaka hangs his head, but he doesn’t confirm it.

Pigsy, being rather less invested in who does what and rather more invested in just seeing the thing done so he can get his breakfast, chimes in on his behalf.

“You _are_ the one who told her to go,” he points out reasonably. “And the one who shoved a chunk of glass through her shoulder, what, three days ago. I mean, would it really kill you to hunt her down, suck it up, and say ‘sorry’?”

Monkey wonders, silently and secretly, if an apology would make any difference to either of them. Sandy is confused and vacant, even on a good day; would she even know what an apology was if he were to offer one? Not that he’s particularly inclined, of course, but still…

Not that it matters, really. He was the one to chase her away, that’s true; no-one else is likely to convince her that he won’t hurt her again if she comes back.

And so, with as much reluctance as he thinks he can get away with, he nods his assent. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look around.” 

Tripitaka’s tiny frame relaxes. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” Monkey shrugs, careful not to betray any actual feeling. “I mean, whatever, right? The little pest can’t have gotten far, and I’m better equipped than either of you to track her down anyway, so…”

Or so he tells himself, at least. Better equipped than Tripitaka to spot a dæmon by its aura, even if she is trying to hide, and better equipped than Pigsy to outrun even her speediest forms. Besides which, the quicker he finds her and drags her back, the quicker they can all pretend none of this ever happened. He’ll take it.

Decision made, he spins on his heel, turning away as fast as he can. He doesn’t want to look the monk in the eye, doesn’t want to see his reaction. Doesn’t want to see anything that might be gratitude, any more than he wants to see the blame or the accusation or anything else.

“Better get that fire going,” he says instead, as cool as he can manage. “Because when I get that freakish little monstrosity back, we’re both going to want food.”

Behind him, snout already pressed to the ground, Pigsy grunt-snorts his approval.

Tripitaka, less approving but grateful nonetheless, calls, “Wear your cloak!”

Being already beyond the bounds of their camp, Monkey cheerfully pretends not to hear that.

*

If he’d known what was coming, maybe he would have been quicker to listen.

Then again, if he’d known what was coming, he probably would have bitten his tongue and not snapped at Sandy in the first place. If his time in the rock taught him anything at all, it’s that hindsight is often more of a torment than a comfort, and so he refuses to dwell on it.

He tracks her down by instinct, drawn to the places where the world is fractionally less cold and grey, the tiny flecks of colour and light that whisper ‘soul’ and ‘dæmon’. Sandy’s aura is a wan, pallid thing, barely even there at all most of the time — it’s nothing like the glittering brightness of Pigsy’s, a soul quietly tended over countless years, even without a human to balance it — but she is still a dæmon, and her presence is inescapable.

It’s not as hard to find her as he expects it to be. Tripitaka warned him that Sandy has a talent for hiding, that it was how she lived her life before they dragged her out of the dark and into the sun, before they became her family and her protectors.

Perhaps that’s true enough to the untrained human eye, but just as Sandy lived her life hiding from humans, Monkey has lived his among dæmons; he knows how to find one without any effort at all. It’s less a testimony to her hiding skills and more another tragedy of this empty world, that humans like Tripitaka can’t do it by instinct too.

He finds her in a dank, miserable cave, a murky little hole that probably reminds her of her former home in the sewers. It makes Monkey feel a little nervous, the dark and the sound of dripping water, makes him wish he had a weapon, or else that he’d listened to Tripitaka and brought the stupid cloak after all. Anything that might offer him a little bit of protection if—

If what?

Stupid, he thinks, and shakes off the senseless discomfort. He’s taking Tripitaka’s panic too much to heart, his warnings about humans who would try to kill a dæmon on sight. Like he couldn’t defend himself if one tried anything, like the little monk thinks he’s as weak and worthless as the useless half-dæmon he’s here to find.

And find her he does.

She’s taken refuge in one of the little pools at the back of the cave, swimming about below the surface in the form of a salamander. He recognises her on sight, of course, familiar enough with her sickly aura to pick it out easily, even when she’s trying to hide it and herself. If she notices his shadow looming over her hiding place, she acts like she doesn’t, swimming in lazy, effortless circles like there’s no-one there but her.

Monkey clears his throat to announce his presence, not out of any kind of etiquette but simply because he doesn’t want to scare the stupid thing to death now that he’s got her; Tripitaka would definitely never let him hear the end of _that_.

“You really thought I wouldn’t find you?” he chides, as gentle as he can.

Whether or not she’s able to see him in that form — he vaguely recalls the Master telling him about sightless amphibians, and the unlucky humans whose dæmons settle in those forms — she certainly hears the words. Her slim, lithe body tenses, and she darts behind some rocks, quick as a blink.

Monkey clenches his teeth. “Knock it off.”

Characteristically annoying, she pretends not to hear him. It’s enough to make him wonder why he came after her in the first place.

“Get out of there,” he snaps, in what he hopes is an authoritative sort of voice. “I’m not here to play hide-and-seek with you; you’ve wasted enough of my time already. Either you come out right now of your own free will, or I’m going to drag you out by the neck.” He puts his hands on his hips to drive the point home, though he’s at least pretty sure the gesture will be lost on her. “So you might as well make this easier for both of us, and come out from there while the choice is still yours.”

Of course she continues to ignore him. He knows better than to expect anything else at this point, but it still lances his patience to be played for a fool by an idiot dæmon who can’t even communicate, and the clenching of his jaw twists into something actively painful; if he chips a tooth trying to hold his temper in check, he’ll do a whole lot more than just drag the stubborn little monster back to camp.

“Get out,” he snaps again, then takes a deep breath and musters the kind of polite patience Tripitaka would preach. “Please?”

And maybe she understands more than he gives her credit for, because she responds to _that_ well enough.

Slowly, hesitant but receptive, she peeks out from behind the rocks, tilting her head in his general direction and squinting with her cloudy, useless salamander’s eyes. It’s entirely pointless, of course, even if she could see well, but it gives him a chance to gauge her body language, to watch the way she twitches, nervous and agitated, like she’s frightened of him.

A fair enough reaction, he supposes; his assault in the sewer is probably the reason she’s swimming sort of sideways. He’s not exactly been gentle with her thus far, and she has no reason to assume that he came all the way out here to apologise; he wonders if she thinks he’s here to finish the job he started back there, if she believes Tripitaka would just abandon her to Monkey’s violent whims.

It’s a fun thought — for him more than her — but woefully far from the truth. He sighs, rolls his eyes, and says “I promise I won’t hurt you this time.”

 _This time_.

He should feel rather more ashamed of that part than he does. Should be making an effort, at least, to apologise for all the small and not-so-small ways he’s done her harm since they met: the still-healing wound on her shoulder, the insults and miscommunications, the emotional turmoil that brought her out here in the first place, all of it. He should be trying, he knows, but he’s not sure he’s really there yet. Not sure he has the words to express what he feels when he looks at her, to be honest in showing regret but also stay true to his own feelings, to the horror and disgust he cannot shake when he looks at her.

He growls, annoyed at himself for once more than her, then flops down onto the damp, rocky ground.

“Look,” he mutters, wringing his hands. “I’m sorry I told you to get lost. That was mean. The monk… Tripitaka… he’s not completely wrong about me, you know? I have a temper, and I’m not always very good at controlling it. And you…”

He clenches his teeth again, not with anger this time but with frustration, conflicted and inexplicably a little helpless. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to talk about this, if he should be honest like he wants to be, or tactful and placating like Tripitaka would want him to be.

Communication is a challenge in this world, even at the best of times — humans without dæmons to show off their souls, dæmons without humans to help with body language — and it’s much, much harder with a dæmon like Sandy, who can’t even use words. Would the truth upset her and make her run away again? Would she be able to read the lie if he went for tact instead, get offended and leave just as well? How in the seven hells is he supposed to know?

Finally, after much difficult deliberation, he opts for honesty. The truth, even if it’s painful, is at least straightforward, and he will never be able to clear the air with her if he can’t at least try to be honest. Even if she doesn’t understand a word he says, at least he can hold his head up high and say that he tried with as much truth and sincerity as he has in him.

“…you make it so _hard_.”

He says it slowly, like a confession, trying to speak like a monk instead of a monkey, a human instead of a dæmon, trying to pretend he has restraint and patience and all those things that come so easily to Tripitaka, all the things he judges him for lacking.

Sandy does not judge him. She turns her body towards him, as though listening, and doesn’t try to flee. Her receptiveness, such as it is, prompts him to continue.

“You’re not easy to connect with, you know? You can’t speak, and you won’t listen, and you’re so… I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t know if you’re just stubborn, or stupid, or if there’s…” He squints into the pool, sees her aura shimmering, flickering, like the light is trying to go out; it looks so sad, so pale and lifeless, he has to turn away. “…or if there’s something _wrong_ with you.”

Sandy sticks her head out of the water at that, breathing raggedly and soundlessly though her open mouth. She peers up at him for a long, thoughtful moment, then seems to give up on trying to see through her sightless salamander eyes and shifts instead into an otter.

It’s not a particularly large form but it’s still bigger than most of her others and it shows off the gash in her shoulder rather too well. Monkey’s chest tightens a bit in spite of itself as she hops out of the water and dashes a short distance away from him. She ignores him, or pretends to ignore him, rolling about in the dirt to dry her new fur and then compulsively grooming herself, flinching every now and then when her shoulder moves too roughly.

Watching her, Monkey finds himself wondering — idly and with the tiniest spark of envy — what it feels like to be able to switch between forms like that, to shift from feathers to fins to fur at the speed of thought, to be almost entirely blind in one moment and in the very next awaken a whole new world of sense and sensation. To choose how to feel, how to look, how to think and see and feel, how to experience the world, to be able to swim or fly or crawl or run, all at a whim…

He never had that. Even as an infant dæmon, he had already settled. And now, five hundred years later, he’s so old the thought is laughable at best. But the way she does it, so easy and effortless, it makes him think—

No.

No, she’s too old as well. Easy to forget that, with the way she behaves, but it’s important; it matters. She shouldn’t be able to do these things any more than he can. He doesn’t know how old she is, exactly, but he knows that she’s too old to be doing things like this.

“You’ll have to settle eventually,” he tells her, blurting it out before he can stop himself. “I mean, I’m sure it’s fun and all, but you can’t stay this way forever. You do know that, right? You…”

He trails off as Sandy goes tense, twitching like he’s struck her a physical blow. Her expression is a little easier to read in this form than most of her others, but Monkey still can’t make very much sense of it. She looks anguished, upset, and her aura seems to flicker and flare under his scrutiny, like she’s trying to swallow down the instinct to transform again, like her body is saying one thing but her heart and mind are saying something entirely different.

She doesn’t transform again, thank the heavens, but she does start to growl, hunching her shoulders and bowing her body, bending almost double, like she’s trying to protect herself from something. His words, perhaps, or his judgement? Hells, maybe she just thinks he’s going to assault her again. A glance at her lean body says he’s not the first to leave his marks on her, and the pang of unwitting compassion that rises up in him at the sight of long-faded scars is like a shock of cold water.

He takes a deep breath, steadying himself against the unexpected feeling, and opens his mouth to try again. “Listen, I—”

She whines, deep and low, then growls again.

It’s different this time, sort of heavier, a rumble that vibrates like a warning all through her body. She’s arching her back now, inching backwards on all fours, looking around with a kind of frenzied desperation, like she’s searching for cover.

Monkey is surprised by how effective the look is; with her teeth bared and her fur sticking up at all angles, she’s surprisingly intimidating. It’s not quite as effective as the gleaming alligator form she had when they fought in the sewer, but it makes Monkey’s hackles rise a little too, automatically, as his instincts catch the tension in the air.

He watches, tense and guarded, as she backs herself into the darkest corner she can find, close enough to the pool that she could slip into the water at a moment’s notice. She’s still making noises, whining and growling and hissing, and Monkey doesn’t understand what’s gotten into her but it doesn’t matter: his own reflexes are taking over without his consent.

It takes a great deal of effort to swallow them down, to fight back the instinct to crouch as well, to slip into a fighting stance and lunge at her like he did in the sewer, not because he hates her — not this time, at least — but because his body is reacting to her behaviour, primal responses beyond either of their control.

Every last inch of her is radiating danger, combative and designed to provoke or intimidate; she’s not picked the most effective form for it, but she makes it work, and Monkey has never needed much prodding to respond with aggression.

“What’s your problem?” he demands, voice as tight as his muscles. “I was trying to apologise! There’s no need to…” He waves a hand, gesturing as his vision whites out. “Are you trying to make me come at you so Tripitaka will take your side again? Is that it? Because it won’t work, you two-faced little ingrate. I made a promise to that monk that I’d bring you back safe and well, and I’ll be damned if I let you goad me into—”

She lunges.

Hissing and spitting, she looks almost feral now, more animal than dæmon. Monkey ducks automatically into a crouch, arms raised to protect himself by instinct and without thought. He’s perfectly willing to stand there and let her throw herself at him, if that’s what it takes to prove to Tripitaka — and to himself — that he is capable of restraint after all, to let her wear herself out, choke to death on whatever stupid resentments are feeding her right now, whatever part of him she can’t forgive, whatever part of her is suddenly so violent, so—

But even as he thinks it, the grey-blue blur of her body zooms straight past him like he’s not even there at all.

She doesn’t so much as glance his way as she throws herself through the mouth of the cave, running at unimaginable speed, much faster than he would have thought possible even in a form that was made for it.

He can sense a little of her frenzied feelings as she passes him, panic and fear and a flicker of anger, and he can see the distortions in her aura as well, the colours flaring brighter than he’s ever seen them, more clarity, more light; for a fraction of a second he’s sure he hears a voice whispering in his head, _run, run_ , but it’s gone before he can be sure, disappearing with her body as she flees the cave.

Monkey spits out a curse. He has no idea what’s gotten into her, but he’s not about to let her get away from him again. This ridiculous farce has gone on long enough, and what little patience he once had is long gone by now.

He gives chase quickly, following her wet prints, the fading glimmer of her aura. Still muttering curses, he’s so busy trying not to lose her trail and not trip over his own damn feet in the process, he doesn’t realise what he’s stumbling into until he’s already up to his neck in it.

The first shout catches him off-guard.

For a brief, stupid second, he actually assumes it’s coming from Sandy. Then he remembers she can’t speak, and assumes — not any less foolishly — that it’s Tripitaka or Pigsy, come to find out what’s taking so long.

But there is violence in the voice, rocky and rough-edged and razor-sharp, and it doesn’t sound familiar at all. Still, it’s not until he lifts his head and finds a horizon fringed with dark, looming silhouettes that he understands.

 _Humans_.

Another shout, almost before he’s finished processing the first, and then there’s a flurry of motion as they converge and throw themselves at him.

Monkey leaps backwards, mind blank, body left to the whim of its reflexes, a hundred tiny reactions happening inside of him all at once, calculating and calibrating and catching his balance, looking around and gauging the situation almost without a conscious thought.

Three of them, two males and one female, all much bigger than he is. Their voices are nothing like Tripitaka’s; raised high in violence they sound thick and ragged, shouting and spitting the word _dæmon_ like it’s a curse, a filthy word or the most horrific slur.

His mind reels, recalling Tripitaka’s warnings, his insistences that the humans of this new world see his kind as a threat, that if they knew who and what he was, they would want to—

An arrow flies over his head, fired by one of the blurring bodies.

He ducks easily, then dives out of the way as another follows closely behind. Then the largest of the three is lunging at him, a wooden cudgel rending the air, and Monkey no longer has the time or resources to waste on thinking or remembering or doing anything at all. Only ducking and dodging and diving.

Blessedly, he’s not wholly unaccustomed to combat situations. The Master believed strongly in discipline, and Monkey was always eager to learn new things, especially if they could bring him closer to humanity; he’s learned all kinds of martial arts and tactical talents over the years, the skills and techniques of the finest human warriors, adapted and improved through his natural gifts, the balance and grace of a monkey’s body.

He took those skills to heart, made them a part of him, showed them off at every opportunity, just one more proof that he was superior to them all, that he was special. It didn’t win very him many friends among the humans, but it did earn him the admiration of their dæmons and — far more important to him personally — the Master.

He is deeply grateful for those skills now, and uses them as best he can, keeping out of reach of his would-be assailants, leaping and ducking and soaring through the air like the miracle of nature he is, keeping a careful distance and making sure those monstrous, pale-faced humans never get the chance to touch him.

Which they would.

He can see it in their eyes, the bloody-minded intent, the most unspeakable cruelty. Twisted, sordid, sickening; it goes against everything that is sacred, and yet he can see beyond all doubt that they would do it without a moment’s hesitation. If he let them get close enough, they would reach out and they would touch him with their filthy human hands, they would _taint_ him…

And so he fights with all the quickness of a monkey, all the cleverness of a human, fights with every ounce of strength, every iota of intelligence he has, to make sure they never get that chance.

He springs upwards, using all of his simian agility, and lands easily on one of the tree branches high above the humans’ heads. Good for getting a view of the situation, better still for staying out of reach.

Peering down, wrapping his tail around the trunk of the tree to hold his body steady, he surveys the world below. The biggest of the humans is glaring up at him, fuming and furious, visibly trying to decide whether it would be worth his time to try and scale the tree and drag him down by force. Monkey sticks his tongue out, daring him to try it, then tears off a handful of the branches from above to twist into a rough, rudimentary staff. It’s not really very strong, but it has reach, and against humans who would try and touch him that’s what matters.

The other male, he sees now, is preoccupied with Sandy. She’s shifted into her alligator form, the biggest and most powerful of all her forms, her aura so wan and faded he almost wouldn’t realise she was a dæmon at all. He’s thrown for a moment back to their first meeting in the sewers, to the sight of her scales and her scars, her pale, glowing eyes, to how easily he was able to subdue her her in spite of her superior size and strength.

History looks set to repeat itself here too. Sandy is growling and snarling, raking her claws and snapping her jaws, but she seems sluggish and strangely disoriented. From his vantage point, Monkey can see a couple of arrows lodged in her thick hide, not so far from where he stabbed her; he can’t tell if they’re causing her any pain, but they’re definitely slowing her down. If someone doesn’t step in and intervene…

No. If _he_ doesn’t step in and intervene. There isn’t anyone else.

Cursing softly to himself, Monkey twirls his makeshift staff over his head, testing its weight, its balance, its ability to inflict damage without falling to pieces. He calculates, as he spins it, the distance from his tree to the floundering dæmon, over the not-so-floundering humans. Then, bracing his legs on the branch, he mutters a quick prayer to whatever gods might still be listening, and launches himself forward in a giant somersault.

He clears the humans below him without any trouble at all, landing effortlessly on his feet with all the grace and agility of a monkey and all the coordination of a well-trained human, the best of both worlds as he has always worked to be.

Staff poised to strike, he lunges at the human cornering Sandy, lashing out without restraint. No need for it, really, whatever Tripitaka might say; a cobbled weapon like this will do a decent enough job in a pinch, but it’s far too flimsy for a killing blow. His best hope is to daze the bastard, get Sandy rallied, and then run for his— no, for _their_ lives.

He manages about half of that.

The human rounds on him, thrown and angry, and Monkey has just enough time to duck under a flailing, half-blind fist before the first one rejoins his friend, both of them converging together on the two dæmons like it somehow makes this a fair fight, two savage humans against two unprepared dæmons, the first quick but crippled by his unwillingness to touch, the other unafraid to use her teeth and claws but hobbled and slowed by injury.

Monkey doesn’t care about his chances. He never has before, and he’s not about to start now. He would fight a hundred humans, even a thousand, with all the cocksure confidence of someone who knows their victory is assured. He would draw his last breath with a smirk on his face, if it came down to that.

He keeps moving, keeps on his feet, keeps every part of himself active and activated; he can’t afford to stay still, can’t stay in one place for more than a second or two without a serious risk of contact, of _touch_ , and so he moves like his life depends on it, bouncing like a cannonball between the two humans and their dæmon prey, trying to make them dizzy, poking occasionally with his staff, playing up the agility of his simian form as best he can, using it to his advantage as he always has.

He stops for maybe half a second, throwing a “you okay?” over his shoulder in Sandy’s general direction. She growls her affirmation, teeth bared, eyes clear and gleaming. He grins his approval, then turns, spins, _leaps_ —

Realises, a split-second too late, his fatal miscalculation.

Two humans in front of him, a dæmon behind—

And as he leaps effortlessly over the cudgel, the flailing fists, the spitting curses, as he spins in midair, readying to bring his staff down on the nearest head, the nearest body, the nearest anything, he is thrown to the ground by a burst of pain in his side, blinding in intensity and wholly unexpected.

But it shouldn’t be. Because he knew.

A dæmon behind him. Two humans in front—

But there were supposed to be _three_.

His focus shatters as he hits the ground, bringing his momentum down with it. Spitting dirt and tasting blood, he looks down to find an arrow sticking out of his side. A little below his shoulder, high enough that it hurts to move his arm; he doesn’t think it’s pierced anything important, but it still hurts like all seven hells, and for a long moment he sees only red and black and _pain_.

A burst of speed cleaves through the air in front of him, and he launches himself out of the way, crying out as a second arrow tears through the spot where his skull was, only a fraction of a second earlier.

Above him, behind him, Sandy lets out a furious sound, a rasping roar like rusted metal scraping against stone; for just a moment, Monkey thinks she’s been hurt again, but then she lumbers forward, driving her body between his and the humans who would make him a pincushion, using her thick hide and gleaming scales to shield him and protect them both.

Monkey squints up, dazed and stunned, and finds in her lean reptilian features a mirror of his own fear and pain. She is faltering, struggling, stumbling, but her teeth are clenched with determination, her eyes burning with ferocity, a wildness he’s never seen before, in her or anyone else. Even after everything he’s done to her, everything he’s said and threatened, still she will protect him, guard him, take care of him. Like—

Like she would Tripitaka.

And maybe it’s not so simple, Monkey realises, as a deluded dæmon believing that the little monk is _her_ human. Maybe this is just the way she is with everyone she cares about: fiercely devoted and blind with loyalty.

The loneliest ones always are, he thinks, with a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with arrows.

He struggles back up to his feet, fingers clamped over the spot where the shaft found its mark. There’s a fair bit of blood, but not enough for him to feel as weak as he suddenly does, and though the wound is painful he has endured far worse without feeling as disoriented and dizzy as he does now. A hole in his side is not enough to explain the way his vision is blurring, the wall of vertigo that rolls over him, making him sway and lurch as he fights to find his balance.

Head swimming, he takes another quick look at Sandy. Her eyes are unfocused as well, the sluggishness he noticed earlier getting worse. Slow, heavy, she looks as bad as he feels, like—

Like—

 _Dammit_.

Realisation hits him like a punch to the stomach, and he reels, squinting up through the dull grey blur, the world spinning all around him. And it should be obvious, the little things that aren’t so little at all, but his mind is in a fog and it takes too long, too damn long to see what’s right in front of him, what is so obvious anyone would see it.

The humans aren’t attacking any more. They’ve got all the opportunity in the world to take advantage of their prey’s weak state, to lunge in and lash out and strike them down while they’re dazed and disoriented, but they haven’t moved at all. Haven’t taken advantage, haven’t even tried. They’re just standing there, the three of them, smiling and tapping their feet, like they’re—

Like they’re _waiting_.

Monkey snarls a curse. It comes out slurred and incoherent.

He looks down at the arrow in his side, a shot aimed with perfect precision, a blow meant to wound but not kill, to throw him off-balance, to get into his body, into his blood, into—

 _Drugged_.

Stupid. Lazy. He should have guessed. Should have realised, should have known, should have—

He has no memory of falling over again, but he must have done at some point because all of a sudden he’s back in the dirt and damp earth, squinting up as the world tilts, watching Sandy as she stumbles forwards, limping, swaying but still going, hauling her big scaled body over his, shielding and guarding, _protecting_ …

“Run,” he tries to shout, but it doesn’t come out right at all; his voice struggles to break past his too-thick tongue, and it doesn’t sound like any word he’s ever heard. “Run, you idiot!”

But she doesn’t. Whether she understands or not, she does not run.

He watches, barely able to see at all, as she summons all her strength and lunges at the three humans, throwing herself at them with no fear of contact, no fear of touching or pain or anything else, like she really thinks she can save them now. She’s a wall of power, sharp teeth and sharp claws, every part of her blazing like a furnace, futile and hopeless but lit up with determination, so desperate to keep him alive, to keep him safe and whole, to do whatever it takes to protect her fellow dæmon, her companion, her—

Friend?

Surely not. That would be—

Stupid. Ridiculous. He—

He doesn’t know. He feels—

His vision is entirely gone now, and his thoughts are too much of a mess to think; everything is fading to black and grey, a maelstrom of colourless confusion, of darkness and wrongness and noise, and all he wants is to put his head down and block it all out, to let it all fade to nothing around him, just dwindle and disappear and—

 _Dissolve_.

And it does. And he— 

And he does too.

Head throbbing, dirt in his nose and his mouth, he closes his eyes and lets the world dissolve.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

He comes around, in pain but still in one piece, in another cave.

Well. More a cavern than a proper cave, not that he’s one to quibble. Shallow and cold and miserable on every level, it’s little more than a slash in the rock face, and its wide, ceiling-high mouth lets in entirely too much sunshine for his bleary, drug-addled eyes to endure. He will not show weakness by allowing himself to groan, but he really, really wants to.

He’s tied up, he notes as he comes back to himself, bound fast to a stalagmite with thick rope cutting into his arms, legs, and chest, tight enough to hurt, certainly tight enough to keep him in place.

His side is throbbing too, a maddening ache where the arrow went in and spread its poison. The shaft has been removed, the wound crudely healed and bandaged up, but the pain is stubbornly persistent, a distraction that won’t be shaken off. It adds itself to the lingering grogginess, the drug no doubt still in his system, making his vision blur and fade, making his limbs loose and useless. Weakness in his body, of course, but it sticks in his head as well, making it hard to hold onto his thoughts, hard to keep them in line.

Not just weakness, though, or disorientation or grogginess. As he comes back into his right mind, he becomes aware of a different sort of discomfort, vivid and visceral; it’s a kind of numb, unfathomable horror, and it shudders through his whole body like the pinpricks of icy sweat that rise with nausea or the vertigo that comes after spinning around for too long. The sensation is deeply unpleasant, but also wholly unfamiliar. For a long moment, he’s unable to figure out what it is or where it comes from.

It doesn’t really hit him until he’s got enough of his bearings to look around and take stock of his situation. He’s struggling feebly against his bonds, trying to pull free even as he knows it’s futile. His monkey form is made for agility, not raw power, and his bonds are pulled brutally tight; still, he’d sooner cut himself bloody on these damned ropes than give up without a fight.

The ropes grow tighter as he struggles, making it difficult to breathe, and he opens his mouth to curse the humans who would dare to bind him when the truth strikes like a bolt of lightning:

They _touched_ him.

With realisation comes clarity, the ice-cold shock of contact under his fur, his skin, the lingering fingerprints where fingers should never have been, the sickening sense of having been completely and thoroughly violated.

The horror of it sticks in his chest, his guts, carving up his nerves like a blade, a layer of visceral discomfort that tears through the grogginess and disorientation, the hatred and anger at being trapped, being helpless, being _weak_.

“I’ll kill them,” he snarls, a fierce whisper that lashes the stale, damp air. “I’ll kill every one of them for daring to touch me!”

Beside him, as though in response, he hears a muted splash.

Sandy. She’s back in her tadpole form, pale and limp-looking, but blessedly still alive.

They’ve put her in a cup of water, locked up in a small, strong cage, like the kind used to house birds, and there she lies, as trapped as he is. She looks about as weak and sickly as he feels, no doubt still fighting off the effects of the drug too; going by the look of her, she’s not likely to be shifting into a more useful form any time soon.

 _Perfect_ , Monkey thinks bitterly, and what little positive feeling he might have found during their little fight-to-the-death promptly evaporates. Useless creature.

Still, he musters a civil, sincere tone when he looks down at her and asks, “You okay?”

No response, of course, not that he really expected one. But if he gets out of this in one piece — if they both do — at least he can tell Tripitaka he tried.

She stares up at him from under the water’s surface, piercing him with her great googly tadpole’s eyes. Speechless as always, still he gets the impression she’s trying to ask if he’s all right too.

Amusement briefly chasing off the irritation, he tries to gesture at his bound body, an answer as wordless as she is, but it’s impossible without the use of his arms; he wonders if this is how she feels in that stupid form, legless and armless and worthless.

“Just peachy,” he says dryly. “Thanks for asking.”

Maybe it’s just his imagination, but he thinks she relaxes slightly at that. She doesn’t look any happier or healthier, but then he supposes the same is likely true for himself as well; until the drug is out of his system, he’s pretty much resigned to feeling like a mountain fell on him. They’ll just have to sit tight until the stuff wears off completely, and try to come up with a plan then. Once Sandy is able to shift forms again, maybe she can break out of that stupid little cage, break him free, and together they can break some human bones.

Not that he’s going to pin his hopes on that, of course.

No reason to assume the humans will keep them alive long enough for all that, either, but he’s rather more willing to place his bets on that than on a drugged, dazed dæmon. If they’d wanted them dead, they’d have done the deed long before now; they’ve had all the opportunity in the world to stick a sword through their ribs, but they haven’t. That they’re still here at all, that he’s bound but still bandaged, that Sandy is in her weakest form but still breathing — that they even went so far as to provide water so she _could_ breathe in that form — it all suggests they want them alive.

Which raises the bigger and rather more important question of why.

It’s a worrying, unpleasant thought, and trying to mull it over makes him feel dizzy and helpless, even more than the ropes cutting into his flesh, the rock scraping on his back, the useless little dæmon caged at his side, all of it.

Because how is he supposed to know? How is he supposed to figure out what a trio of humans would want with a pair of dæmons stuck in the middle of nowhere, when he doesn’t even know how this stupid waste of a world even works? He is still so new here, and he still knows so little. Nothing, really, except what Tripitaka has told him: that humans are mistrustful of dæmons, that they would kill him on sight if they saw him and recognised what he really was.

Except they didn’t.

So the one thing he does know to be true is not true at all.

He’s not dead, and neither is Sandy; in fact, from what he’s gathered, they’re purposely and deliberately _not_ -dead. Kept alive by intention, but for what?

Perhaps Tripitaka would be able to figure it out, with his monk’s wisdom and his familiarity with this new world. Or maybe Pigsy would, with his pig-dæmon intelligence and his ability to learn by observation. But neither one of them are here. It’s just them, just Monkey and Sandy, a dæmon out of time and an unnatural little abomination who couldn’t form words even if she did have a clue, which she clearly does not. Just them, pathetic and alone, and if he was a little less proud Monkey might almost want to cry.

He doesn’t, of course. Just leans his head back, breathing slow, and tries to stay calm. Rough and damp, the stone makes his fur stand on end; one more thrum of discomfort to add to the ever-growing list. He tries to focus instead on the dripping of water from ceiling and the walls, the occasional splashes from Sandy in the cage next to him, the arrhythmic discordance of it all, wet and solid and disgusting He tries to keep his mind clear, his thoughts on anything except the hopelessness of his predicament.

Imprisoned. _Again_. And for what? Being what he is, nothing more.

When he came out of the rock, he swore to himself that he would never let something like this happen again. Never again would he stand by and accept punishment for something he hadn’t done, never again would he allow himself to be made a martyr, guiltless and blameless but hated just the same. _Never again_ … and yet here he is, bound and tied and helpless, useless, worthless.

His head is heavy, his body heavier, his bonds squeezing his chest and his limbs. The blood still burns where the arrow went in, for all that they’ve patched it up, and the pulses of pain seem to whisper in his ear, _failure, failure, failure_.

He is angry. He is wild with it, furious and halfway blind. He wishes he could change forms like Sandy can, wishes he could turn into something enormous, something cataclysmic and unstoppable. He wishes he could become a goliath, a monster, a force of destruction, wishes he could bring this cave down, stone by stone, onto the heads of every human who would ever hurt a dæmon, who would ever dare to touch one with their bare, filthy hands.

But of course he can’t do any of that. He can’t change forms, no more than Sandy can speak, no more than Pigsy can rewrite the passage of time and believe that his human still loved him. None of them can be more than what they are, what the world decided to make them. Monkey can only be what he is, unique but fixed: a dæmon who has only ever known one form. Quick and clever, graceful and agile and effortless, but adrift and lost in a world that despises him, a world made by him but not for him.

He closes his eyes. Tries to think through the waves of helplessness, of frustration, of futility and impotence and pain. Tries to cling to the anger instead, tries to bring it back to the surface, to overpower the weakness, the wooziness, the groggy, dull haze still hanging heavily over him.

Tries to think, tries not to feel. Tries to make himself powerful and strong, tries to…

Tries to _focus_ , even as the drug still blurs and distorts his thoughts, his body, his everything…

Tries to concentrate, tries to keep himself in one piece, tries to hold still…

Tries to…

To…

 _Dammit_.

*

He jerks back to himself, a couple of minutes or a couple of hours later, jolted back to alertness by the sounds of voices nearby.

“—taking so long?”

Monkey cracks one eye open. Cautious, careful to make it look like he’s still asleep; he doesn’t know if they’re watching, but he’s not about to take any chances now. He can make out their silhouettes, the three humans who captured them; they’re huddled together at the mouth of the cave, speaking in what they probably assume are hushed voices. Listening closely, Monkey doesn’t even need to strain his ears; amplified by the rock walls, he can hear every word.

“Shouldn’t they be here by now?” the biggest one is griping, impatience thickening his strange accent. “I thought you said this’d be quick and easy. Thought you said they couldn’t be apart from their humans too long, these dæmon things. But it’s been bloody hours, and nothing.”

Monkey takes a moment to process this. Easy to assume they’re talking about Tripitaka, that they expect the little monk to show up and mount a rescue for his missing companions. But something in his uncertainty, the weighted way he says ‘things’ tells a different story, one rather more advantageous:

They don’t actually know anything about dæmons.

Ignorant and stupid, they really believe that he and Sandy have humans of their own, tethered and connected and waiting for their return. They really, truly believe that they could have got this far from their humans, that the separation wouldn’t have killed them long before now, that dæmons and their humans can simply wander away from each other like wayward children or straying sheep.

Impossible. Ridiculous. Are the humans in this world really so stupid, so ignorant? Do they really know so little about how their own souls work?

Monkey bites down on his tongue, willing himself not to speak or move, not to do anything that might give away the fact that he’s listening. He cracks the other eye open, slow and careful, and watches as the humans pace around the entrance of the cave, making a study of their restlessness, their uneasiness.

It was easy to simply assume in the heat of combat that they were professionals — strong and fast, they knew well enough how to win a fight, how to suppress and subdue their foes — but now he’s not so sure. They’re nervous, like just being close to two dæmons makes them feel unsafe and uncomfortable.

The smaller of the two males is twitching, clearly annoyed that his partner is pointing the finger at him. “How should I know?” he snaps in a tight, ragged-sounding voice. “Do I look like an expert to you?”

The female laughs. “Clearly not.” She stretches lazily, showing off an impressive musculature. “But don’t sweat it. They’ve got to show up eventually, right? Can’t live without their little soul-pets indefinitely. And when they do get here…”

She flashes a sharp, cocky grin, then brandishes a weapon the likes of which Monkey has never seen before.

It’s a strange-looking thing, more like a tool than a weapon. A long handle and a curved, keen blade, like a scythe or an axe, forged in a beautiful shimmering metal he doesn’t recognise; it catches the sunlight and throws out impossible rainbows of colour, gleaming and glittering and breathtaking. It’s so clean, so smooth; from the right angle, it almost looks like living liquid. For a moment, the sight of it steals Monkey’s breath.

The human, still smirking, takes a few careless swings with the thing; it carves a clean, perfect arc, effortlessly graceful, like it could cleave the air itself in two.

Whatever it is, it’s either very dangerous or very valuable. The big male cries out, then yanks the thing out of his companion’s hands like it’s just caught fire.

“Knock it off!” he cries, setting the weapon carefully to one side. “Do you really want to mess around with that thing?”

Monkey furrows his brow, trying to piece together this new information. He cracks his eyes open a fraction wider while they’re distracted, chancing a glance at the cage next to him. Maybe Sandy knows more than he does about—

He gasps, bowled over by a wave of emotion so strong it makes his head snap back, vision blurring not with dizziness but with tears.

It is overpowering, overwhelming. Fear, anger, nausea, grief, a hundred other feelings, each one more potent and painful than the last. For a long, breathless moment he’s too disoriented to even try and figure out where it came from.

Then his mind and his vision clear, and he looks down into the cage, and he understands.

Sandy is in a state of complete and utter panic. Swimming in frantic circles, round and round and round in her little bowl, he’s never seen her so agitated. It’s her distress he’s feeling, he realises, an overflow of emotion so powerful she can’t even begin to control it.

He drives the sensation down with only a minor force of will, practised and familiar with this sort of thing. In the old world, it was quite normal for dæmons to have such connections with their humans, to communicate without the need for speaking; no-one really understood it, but it was a natural occurrence that most took for granted. Indeed, Monkey had a similar such connection with the Master, and he’s always assumed that’s how Sandy communicates — as much as she is able — with Tripitaka.

It doesn’t exactly surprise him that her feelings would overflow in a moment of intense emotion. What does surprise him, however, so much that he’s left momentarily speechless, is that it’s happening _now_.

Monkey clenches his jaw, wills himself to be patient. It’s a little easier with only his own emotions to deal with.

“What’s the matter?” he hisses at her, as gently as he can. It’s difficult enough, trying to communicate with her on a good day; like this, it’s almost impossible. “Do you know what that thing is?”

Her panic surges again, a wave of it so powerful that Monkey can’t immediately fight it back down. He chokes on bile and blood, feeling the nauseous horror as if it was his own, and it takes more strength than he would ever admit to regain control of himself again, to slow his pulse, his heart.

“Stop that!” he whispers savagely. “You’re not helping!”

Sandy jerks and shudders, swimming a few more circles in the cup in a futile attempt to calm and steady herself. Monkey watches, curious and annoyed but a little worried now, too, in spite of himself. He’s not used to feeling anything for her except revulsion and disdain, but the lingering echoes of her horror and pain are so violent, so awful, he can’t help it. Whatever has got her feeling like this, it must be something truly awful.

It takes her a long while recover herself. Long enough that the humans have stopped bickering and moved back out into the light, long enough that Monkey is able to give up the pretence of being asleep and focus all of his attention on this; he still doesn’t understand, but he knows enough to know that this is serious, and so he makes an effort to show some compassion.

“I know you can’t talk,” he says, keeping his voice low and gentle, like he’s trying to coax a wounded kitten out of hiding so he can yank a thorn from its paw. “But I need you to help me understand what’s happening. Can you do that? Can you try, at least? For me?”

She stares up at him, her tadpole’s eyes bulging and unblinking. Looking into them, Monkey is sure he can see all of her anger and fear reflected by water, the visceral brutality of it blinding him as surely as if he were still feeling it for himself. He turns his face away, stunned and a little bit sickened, and is just about to ask her to try again when he hears something.

Thread-thin and scarcely audible, but there it is. A single word pressed against the inside of his mind, wisplike and intangible, like the fading whispers of a dream:

 _Severed_.

Monkey blinks, uncomprehending.

He knows what the word means, of course — he recalls one of the Master’s old friends, a general who’d lost part of his arm in a war some time before Monkey was born; they used that word, _severed_ , to talk about the part the healers had needed to cut off — but he doesn’t understand why Sandy is saying it now, what it means in the context of their captivity.

Does she really think those humans would go to all this trouble to keep them alive and well, only to start hacking pieces off their bodies now? Doesn’t she understand that they’ve had a thousand opportunities to do that already?

“They’re not going to hurt us,” he tells her; he’s trying to sound soothing — confused or not, her agitation is very real — but his voice gives away too much of his annoyance to offer very much solace. “They patched us up, remember? Kept us alive when they could’ve killed us any time. If they wanted to hurt us, they would have done it by now, wouldn’t they? So why don’t you just calm down and—”

He cuts off, bowled over by another wave of panic and fear.

It’s different this time, though. Not just emotion and thought, but something else as well, an echo of voices, a blurring haze of sights and sounds and sensations, of—

Memory?

A baby born in a bathtub, his dæmon cradled in his arms, a tiny tadpole breathing water. She is calm, content, and her presence soothes him. For a moment that seems to last forever, they are whole, connected and complete, body and soul exactly as they should be. It is wonderful, it is perfect, it is everything…

But then his parents pluck him out of the water and into the bright, cold world, and his father peers down into the water and sees her, a strange and terrible thing, a creature tethered and connected to his child, his precious human child. An abomination, a monster, a _dæmon_ …

Monkey chokes, rocked down to his bones, shaken and sickened by their disgust, their rejection, their hate; it is a physical thing, a wave of force he cannot drive back. He remembers, horror rising into his mouth, what Tripitaka said in the sewer when he asked about Sandy’s lost human: _they can’t have been connected for very long, if she never even learned how to communicate._

And suddenly, in a flash of awful, brutal clarity, he understands.

He doesn’t need to see it, but she shows him anyway, the twisted nightmare of a thing that came next. The edge of the blade, glinting in the light, its liquid steel distorted by water, throwing rainbows in all directions. A threat, a promise, a whisper as it came down, slicing through their connection like it was nothing, like it was meaningless, worthless, like it was _wrong_ , like she was—

 _Wrong_.

Just like Monkey always said she is.

He feels sick. He feels awful. He—

He hears her cries in his head, silent and soundless but he knows them. Newborn, she didn’t understand what was happening, only that in one moment she was whole and happy and at peace, and in the next the world became cold and dark and awful, that all of a sudden everything hurt, everything was scary and she was alone, alone, _alone_ …

Severed.

Not the body, Monkey realises, too late to stem the horror. Not her limbs or her tongue or her voice, but something much, much worse, something so unnatural he still can’t fathom it, even after watching it happen. Her human, their connection, cut away and slashed to pieces. Gone, in the time it took to swing a blade. The most heinous thing Monkey can imagine, a twisted, terrible nightmare, an abomination so much worse than the thing they saw in her.

A dæmon? No, not that. Anything but that. They had to save their child from such a terrible fate as having one of those.

No wonder she’s wrong, he thinks queasily. No wonder she never settled, no wonder she never learned how to speak or communicate or connect to the world around her. No wonder she’s so stunted and twisted; all of a sudden the visceral disgust he feels whenever he looks at her makes perfect sense. It was never _her_ that horrified him, at least not really; it was the thing that was done to her. It was the part of him, as natural as breathing, that looked at her, seeking out a connection — even one as tattered and frayed as Pigsy’s, burned down to dust and ashes by resentment and death — and finding nothing there.

He thought she was unnatural, thought she was an abomination, twisted and wretched and wrong. But she’s not, she never was.

 _They_ are. The humans who would do this to her, who would cut away the most precious thing in the world and then throw it into the sea like a dead, decaying fish.

She’s drifting in the water when he musters the courage to look back into her cage, tail wiggling lethargically as she tries and fails to reorient herself. Monkey flounders uncomfortably, not sure what to say, not even really sure if there’s anything he can or should say, if there are any words in the world that can make this right. He read her so wrong, treated her so poorly, and all because he didn’t understand.

Such arrogance. Such stupid, wilful ignorance. Looking at her now, it is like seeing the world lit up for the first time, transformed into something so bright it leaves him blinded and in pain.

He swallows down his grief and his guilt, even his compassion. There will be time enough to apologise later, he thinks, once they’ve both processed this. But for now…

For now, they’re still prisoners. And he finally understands why.

“That’s what they want,” he realises aloud. The hoarseness of his voice surprises him, but he will not let it slow him down. “They think we’re connected. Whole. They think our humans are coming for us. And when they do, they’ll be ready with that thing to… to…”

 _Sever_.

But he can’t say it. Just thinking the word sends a ripple of nausea all through his body, makes Sandy start to twitch and jerk in her bowl, a seizure born not of fear but experience.

“It’s okay,” Monkey reminds them both, catching his breath and grounding himself in the situation. “It’s okay, this is a _good_ thing.”

Mute and almost paralytic, still somehow Sandy manages to express her disbelief.

“It is,” Monkey assures her, bolstered by the truth of it, by having something solid and real to hold on to. “Because we have no humans, no connection. I never had one and you…” He swallows. “They can’t do it to you again, right? Because there’s nothing left. There’s nothing to… to sever.”

He has to force the word out through gritted teeth, shaking all over, but once it’s out he actually feels a bit better. He’s calmer now, for having said it, having thrown the word and all its power to the wind and reminded himself of the truth: as horrific as it is, it holds no power over them. Two dæmons without humans, one whole and complete all on his own and the other already severed a long time ago; there is nothing more their captors can do to them. Their twisted little weapon is harmless. It’s useless, it’s worthless, it—

It means they’re _safe_.

For now, at least. Until those idiots finally realise there are no humans coming, that they’ve caught two bodiless, humanless souls, useless to them and their twisted purpose. Until they get smart, figure out the truth, and decide to just kill them outright.

Bound at his sides, Monkey’s fingers curl into fists. Fear, yes, and dread, but also a fierce, determined sort of passion. It burns in his chest, sparking power, igniting every nerve in his body and making him powerful. These hellish, monstrous humans have picked the wrong damn dæmon to make a victim; he’ll make sure it’s the last mistake they ever make.

 _Well, then_ , he thinks, invigorated for the first time in far too long. _Time to come up with a plan_.

*

By late afternoon, he’s made and discarded three different plans.

The first depends, rather idealistically on an impromptu rescue attempt from Tripitaka and Pigsy. After two hours of fruitless, impatient hoping, he concedes that this is not very likely.

The second depends on him breaking free of his bonds. This, he attempts for rather longer than he’d care to admit, rubbing his wrists raw on the rope before finally giving it up as equally improbable.

The third, and the most realistic on the face of it, depends on Sandy breaking free of _her_ bonds.

Simple enough, once she’s got enough of her strength back to shift into a more powerful form, but waiting for that to happen is trying at best; indeed, the more Monkey looks at her the less likely it seems. She was doing pretty poorly to begin with, still wounded and half-drugged just like he was, but the exertion of sharing her story with him seems to have exhausted her completely; she’s floating on her back, not moving, eyes bleary and unfocused, staring at nothing.

Monkey would never admit to being worried about her, but…

No. He’s worried about his _plan_. That’s all.

He asks her a couple of times if she’s all right, but apparently her willingness to communicate — even in her usual stagnant way — has been exhausted along with her strength, because she shows no sign she even heard.

It’s bad enough, the way she looks, that he actually risks mentioning it to the humans. They’ve mostly been content to ignore their captives until this point, arguing and squabbling amongst themselves, occasionally standing watch in futile hope of spotting their non-existent humans on the horizon, but as the daylight starts to dwindle, one of the males ventures into the back of the cavern to check up on them.

“Your humans must not like you much,” he says to Monkey, dripping arrogance and ignorance in equal measure; it’s quite impressive, really. “Else they’d’ve come after you already. Do you suppose they’d care if we just killed you right here? Or would they think we did them a favour, getting rid of you like the abominations you are?”

Monkey shrugs, feigning a similar level of stupidity. It’s not easy.

“You kill us, they die too,” he points out calmly. “That’d make you murderers. _Human_ murderers. I don’t think you really want that, do you?”

It’s a pretty big gamble. He has no idea how deep these idiots’ morality goes; from what he’s seen thus far, he has no reason to believe he’d have any more scruples over killing humans than dæmons. Still, the way he sneers at the word, the way he says ‘abomination’, so much like the way Monkey thought of Sandy just yesterday, tells him that it’s not about life but about _them_. What they are, what it means.

A gamble, yes, but one he’s pretty confident about.

Sure enough, the human seems to consider that for a while. Monkey can almost see the wheels turning inside his head as he tries to gauge the truth of it. There is comfort in his confusion, in seeing the struggle play out across his features, in seeing it confirmed yet again that he, like his companions, really has no idea how these things actually work.

He doesn’t know that humans and dæmons share the same fate, life and death and every breath in between. He doesn’t know that they can’t be separated like this, that they can’t be kept apart; he doesn’t realise that Monkey and Sandy would have been dead long before now if they really did have humans connected to them. He doesn’t know anything about anything, and that makes him weak.

“You’re awfully cocky,” he says to Monkey, after a long silence, “for an abomination tied to a rock.”

Monkey snorts. “And you’re awfully ugly,” he counters, “for a human with no dæmon.”

The human glares at that, beady little eyes hardening to steel. “Do you even _have_ a human?”

And there it is, the question Monkey was trying to avoid, wrung out by his own cockiness.

He takes it in stride, as best he can, willing himself not to swallow or wince, not to blink or flinch, not to do or say anything that might give away the truth. Easy enough when dealing with an imbecile who only sees what he wants to see and doesn’t care enough to dig deeper than the surface.

Sandy makes for a convenient distraction, a way for Monkey to guide the conversation in a different direction and get her some help at the same time. She hasn’t moved in several hours now, and she hasn’t acknowledged the human’s presence at all. It’s possible that she’s still sleeping off the effects of the drug — even taking her tough alligator form into account, she did take more arrows than him — but Monkey’s not entirely convinced.

“You should take a look at her,” he says, more tightly than he intended.

“Her?” The human raises a brow, but blessedly doesn’t question the change of subject. “The little fish thing?”

“Tadpole,” Monkey corrects, rolling his eyes; apparently this one’s stupidity is not limited to dæmons. “She’s a tadpole. And she’s not doing well. Even you can figure out that much, right?”

It’s a risky play, poking at his ego, especially with the idiot already voicing doubts. But then, Monkey has a feeling neither one of them would be here in the first place if he was the kind to rise to such obvious bait. A hired thug, most likely, working under orders from some higher-up, the unique breed of of fool who gets paid to do what he’s told and not think for himself; to Monkey’s relief, he ignores the jibe and takes the words at face value.

“Looks fine to me,” he mutters, peering into Sandy’s cage. “What are your kind supposed to look like when they’re hurt, anyway?”

Monkey sighs. “She’s a tadpole,” he says again, like he’s talking to a slow, stupid child. “She’d look like a tadpole does when it gets hurt.” He clenches his teeth, willing his fists not to follow suit. “Look. Any imbecile can see that she’s not well. Does she look even remotely normal to you?”

The human makes a noncommittal grunting sound, then leans in to frown at the listless little dæmon, still floating motionless on her back, big eyes staring blindly at nothing.

“Oi!” He doesn’t even try to sound sympathetic. “You alive in there?”

No response from Sandy, not even a flick of her tail. Monkey feels a twinge in his chest, anxiety spiking, and he struggles to force it back down.

“Do something!” he grits out, not even caring that his voice is breathy with worry.

The human sighs, muttering something under his breath about how he’s not paid enough for this — definitely a hired thug, then; good to know for sure — and grudgingly pulls the cage door open.

“Probably just needs fresh water or something,” he huffs, reaching for the bowl.

Monkey really, really hopes so. He’s never seen a tadpole dæmon before, and he doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of one. The only thing he knows with any kind of certainty is that Tripitaka would kill him if anything happens to Sandy while he’s the one responsible for her. And after what he’s just learned, the real reason why she’s so unnatural and so wrong, Monkey finds that he’s rather more reluctant to let her suffer any more than she already has. So for all their sakes, the stupid, clumsy human had better be right.

“Be careful,” he hears himself snap. “If you hurt her again, I’ll—”

He probably deserves the derisive look he gets. “You’ll what?”

“—when I’m _free_ —”

“Right, right.” He rolls his eyes, already bored with this. “Whatever you say, _dæmon_.”

And he yanks the bowl out of the cage, deliberately careless now, just to annoy him.

Sandy’s body rolls lifelessly in rhythm with the motion of the water as it sloshes over the side of the bowl, tossed about as if on the sea. She looks halfway dead, unresponsive and so, so still. And then—

And then, in a burst of violence that stuns Monkey as much as the human, she leaps up and out of the water, transforming in midair from tadpole to frog, landing on their captor’s face with the perfect precision of a carefully-aimed projectile.

Monkey’s jaw drops open.

It’s not the first time she’s stunned him like this; he remembers the disbelief flooding him in the sewer when she showed him what she was, shifting forms like it was the most normal thing in the world. It’s a different sort of shock he feels now, though, incredulity overpowered by heart-stopping relief.

She’s alive. She’s healthy. She’s _free_.

And, apparently, she’s a whole lot smarter than he is.

He decides not to dwell on that part.

The sight of contact still horrifies him a little, a dæmon throwing herself at a human, using her body to make contact with him, to _touch_ him, even in desperation and self-defence. He’s gotten used to the contact she shares with Tripitaka by now, the way his touches calm and soothe her when she’s upset; he may not like it, even now, but he’s grown acceptant of the strange bond they seem to share — painfully reminiscent of the one he had with the Master — and he understands now why she doesn’t know any better, why human contact is the only kind of contact she’s ever known, why it is no more strange to her than the ability to shift forms, the unsettled nature of a dæmon torn from her human before either of them knew what they were.

He understands all of that now, on a level he didn’t before. But still, instinct is instinct — his just as much as hers — and he has to look away when she leaps on the human’s face, unable to suppress his primal horror.

When he turns back, just a few seconds later, the human is stumbling backwards, off-balance and visibly disgusted — more by the sliminess of the assault, Monkey suspects, than the contact itself — and Sandy has just landed on her feet in the dirt, effortless and graceful. A low growl, strangely un-frog-like is the only warning either of them get before she transforms again, shifting lithely into her alligator form, her biggest and most dangerous.

Her intent is obvious when she turns to face their former captor again, eyes and scales gleaming, teeth and claws sharp and primed for dealing damage.

Behind her, still tied to the stalagmite, Monkey can sense her emotions, anger and pain and grief like a wall of heat, an unquenchable fire that would devour all three of them if given half a chance. He clears his throat, rather more to bring her back to herself than to draw her attention to his predicament, and hopes there’s enough in her to understand.

“Hey!” Considerably higher than normal, the strained pitch of his voice takes him by surprise. “You mind cutting me loose first?”

She turns, keen eyes piercing the dark to meet his. Teeth still bared, white scales glittering as they catch the sun from beyond the cave, jaws slavering with hunger; for a terrifying moment it seems like she doesn’t recognise him at all, like she’s so caught up in the tidal wave of her emotions that she’s forgotten where she is and how she got there, forgotten that Monkey is a friend and not one of her enemies.

The sight of her makes Monkey’s mouth go dry, nervous around her for the first time since they met. He’s bound and helpless; she’s free and wild, and what little sanity she might have once had is fraying at the seams, one stupid word away from snapping completely. If she went for him, whether she recognised him in the moment or not, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He is completely at her mercy, and he has given her no good reason to show him any.

Luckily for him, she comes back to herself before she can take action. Shaking her head like she’s coming out of a dream, she nods and stumbles towards him, recognition igniting behind her pale eyes. She frees him quickly, slashing at the ropes and taking great care not to catch his fur or his skin; for someone on the brink of madness, she has remarkable self-control. It’s more than Monkey can say for himself.

The instant he’s free, though, she turns back to the mouth of the cave, breaking into a fierce, furious run. There’s nothing else for her now, Monkey can tell, only the humans who hurt them and their hells-forged weapon.

Monkey sighs, snatching up a frayed piece of the rope that once bound him, the only weapon he’s likely to find in a place like this, and scrambles after her.

*

It’s nothing like their previous fight.

This time, it’s the humans who are caught by surprise, who are unprepared for the shock as their third member comes tearing out of the cave, yelling and crying and shouting for weapons.

The other two leap up, instinct driving them to action, but even they seem taken aback at the sight of the lumbering, snarling alligator dæmon snapping at their friend’s heels, ravening and ravenous. There is nothing in the world more terrifying than blind fury, Monkey knows, and he’s smart enough to keep his distance, giving Sandy as much space as she needs to make her attack.

And attack she does.

Feral and furious, ferocious and feverish and frenzied, she snaps and slashes at whichever human is closest, neither knowing nor caring who she’s attacking or whether her assault finds its target. There’s nothing in her now but violence and vengeance, the pain of her own past and the realisation that such horrors are still alive and well in the present; she will end this, she will end _them_ , and she will do it in a bloodbath if left unchecked.

Given the choice, Monkey would gladly leave her unchecked.

They deserve it.

No. They deserve _worse_.

For even thinking about severing a dæmon from its human, much less for actually going through with it, they deserve the worst punishments imaginable. Monkey and the others will probably never know how many dæmons have been severed by that awful weapon of theirs, how much blood money these filthy humans have earned from it, or who’s been paying them to do the deed. As far as he’s concerned, it doesn’t matter; torture is torture, and it should be repaid in kind.

He would happily leap in and lend a hand, help Sandy dispatch them with as much blood and fire as he can, and it’s only his fear of touching humans that stays his hand.

Even just the thought of making contact sickens him, leaves him more shaken than a dozen drug-filled arrows. And so he stays back, helping from a distance as best he can; leaping up into a tree and lashing his rope at anyone stupid enough to get within reach.

It’s not much. Enough to catch them off-guard divide their attention somewhat — he trips one of the males, lasso-style around the ankles, raining blows down on his head for good measure — but it’s not much of a weapon for inflicting actual damage. He’ll need a better one, if he wants a hope at being useful in combat in this world where humans would touch and torture him without a thought; he makes a mental note to talk to Tripitaka about it, assuming they get out of this in one piece.

Sandy, of course, does not share his qualms about contact. Unafraid and too far gone to care even if she did, she backs the other two against a tree, jaws snapping and slavering and rabid; the female is paralysed, gibbering and cringing like the cowardly fool she is — not so tough, it seems, without her drug-laced arrows to give her the advantage — but the male is trying to fight back, brandishing his cudgel like it’s more than the stupid little stick it is, striking futilely at Sandy’s scaled hide like he really believes it’ll protect him from her now.

It won’t, of course, and the effort does more harm than good. Perhaps if he’d had the brains to stay down like his friend, he might have gotten out of this with a few bruises, but Sandy is in no mood to be assaulted again, however much in vain. She lunges like lightning, snapping her jaws and swiping with her claws, and the male goes down with a scream, blood pouring from his leg and his side, gleaming and glinting in the hazy sun, coating Sandy’s claws and teeth.

Monkey flinches, growing dizzy and light-headed at the sight of it. He’s seen violence before, of course, and blood, but there is a big difference between watching two dæmons or two humans go at each other in combat and _this_. A human’s blood on a dæmon’s teeth, a dæmon’s claws raking through a human’s flesh…

His stomach lurches. He did not expect that, and his vision blurs just enough that he has to hop down from the tree or risk falling against his will. The other humans are as horrified as he is, both stumbling to their feet and running for their lives; he briefly considers chasing them down and forcing them to face judgement for their crimes, but there is a much more pressing matter at hand.

It takes more strength than he’d care to admit, shaking himself back to his senses, willing his legs to work, throwing himself into the fray, when all he wants is to run the other way.

He leaps, flinging his lean body into the space between them, shielding the blood-soaked human from Sandy’s keen claws, from her sharp teeth, shielding him from what he deserves, a line he cannot let her cross.

“Sandy!” His voice is hoarse. Her name sounds like a curse on his tongue, strangled and suffocated. “That’s enough. You’ve made your point.”

She turns her head, piercing him with her pale eyes, anger and pain and a depth of sorrow he understands too well. He is acutely aware of the difference in their size, and of the space between their bodies; he remembers Tripitaka, back in the sewer, throwing himself between the two of them, willing to protect Sandy with his life if it came down to that, believing with all his heart that there was goodness in her, something worth protecting in that wretched, ragged beast.

Monkey does not feel the same way about the human monster hiding behind him, but he does feel that way about the monk he’s promised to follow, and perhaps a little bit for the dæmon, too, whose soul is not yet lost.

He hears an echo inside his head, the dull pulsing hum of all her violent feelings, all the hurt she shared with him, hunger and rage and a fierce need to _protect_ …

And he agrees, he really does. He wants those things too, justice and righteousness and the blood of these worthless monsters soaking the ground, the earth.

But he knows, too, that this is not about him, not about her, not about them. It’s about showing restraint, just like Tripitaka said; he did not understand until just now. It’s about rising above such hellish, horrible people, rising above such nightmares as they would inflict without thought, about being better than the monsters who would inflict such pain on those whose only crime was to exist.

They are rare and precious things, dæmons, in a world that has lost its way, and they cannot afford to become as corrupt as the humans whose souls they once shared.

“Sandy.” His voice is shaking; he wills it to stay strong for her sake. “Sandy, this isn’t what we’re about. Remember what the monk said? Remember all that peace and love stuff?”

Sandy growls, but does not back down. Monkey swallows, and tries again.

“Remember Tripitaka. Your monk, your… _our_ little human. He’d want us to do the right thing. He’d want us to be kind, to show compassion. He’d want us to show these bastards that we’re not like them, that dæmons are better than humans will ever be. We both know that’s what he’d want. And I know…” Again, his voice breaks, but this time he doesn’t try to keep it still. “I know you want to do right by him. I know you do. So for the monk’s sake… for _him_ , Sandy. Please.”

Another growl, lower this time and sort of conflicted. She cocks her head, looking from him to the semi-conscious human at her feet, to the blood pooling on the ground between them. Hungry, desperate, but…

“It’s enough,” Monkey whispers.

And even if it’s not, it has to be.

The human is badly hurt, his friends both fled into the forest, likely never to be seen again. They’ll confiscate the weapon, destroy the camp and leave them with nothing, safe in knowing that these ones, at least, will never harm another dæmon again. It is not what they deserve, no fitting punishment for their awful crimes, but it is enough.

Tripitaka would tell them it is. Tripitaka would—

But Tripitaka isn’t here.

Only Monkey, angry and grieving and wounded, and Sandy, all of those things and worse besides, both of them so desperate to hurt these people, to punish them as they deserve to be punished, to become like the monsters they were brought here to overcome. Neither one of them is like Tripitaka, so patient and full of peace and love, but one of them has to try. One of them has to speak with his voice when he’s not here to speak for himself.

And Monkey is the only one of them who can speak at all.

So he does.

Resting one hand on Sandy’s uninjured shoulder, he turns her gently away from her would-be prey, from the carnage that could have been so much worse. _Easy, easy,_ he doesn’t say, because it’s not.

And she is growling and snarling and hissing, making the most terrible sounds, but she is not resisting and she is not struggling. And he knows, with an intimacy that scares him a little, how much it costs her to turn away from this, but still she does it, still she forces herself to become more than what she is. Because it is the right thing to do, and because Tripitaka would want her to do it.

Monkey stoops to pick up the weapon, holding it like the twisted, unearthly thing it is. Standing close, leaning heavily on her uninjured limbs, Sandy lets out a low, mournful howl.

Monkey does not join her, though a part of him wants to.

“Come on,” he says instead, and strokes her thick, wounded hide like Tripitaka would. “Let’s go home.”

*

 


	4. Chapter 4

*

Night has started to fall by the time they crawl their way back to camp.

Tripitaka is beside himself, frantic with worry, pacing in circles around the fire like wearing tracks in the ground will do anyone any good. Pigsy, being considerably less concerned and rather more level-headed in general, seems content to nose around in the dirt, throwing out occasional reassurances for the monk’s sake, empty placations like ‘it’s only been a few hours’ and ‘I’m sure they’re fine’, like he has any way of knowing that for sure.

Luckily for all of them, he’s right.

Monkey is struggling to keep his spine straight, limping with his arm pressed tight to his bandaged side, and Sandy — back in her otter form, smaller and faster for travelling the distance — is unable to put any weight on her wounded shoulder. They’re both in a pretty bad state, dirty and sweaty and too exhausted to even try and hide their pain, and Monkey thinks it’s probably for the best that neither Tripitaka nor Pigsy notice their approach.

He clears his throat as they reach the fringe of the campsite, and summons a strained, effortful grin for their friends’ sakes.

“Miss us, monk?”

Tripitaka’s whole body jerks and seizes, like he’s just been struck by lightning. He whirls around, spinning on his heels with surprising grace, and his entire face softens into something infinitely beautiful; he stares at them like they’re magical beings from another world, like he wants to throw himself at the two of them and wrap them up in the world’s biggest hug.

The thought alone is enough to make Monkey shudder, more uncomfortable than ever before with the idea of physical contact. Even with Tripitaka, who he trusts and respects more than anyone since the Master.

Somewhat to his surprise, Sandy flinches as well. She shrinks down into her rat form and flees, darting under the monk’s legs before he has the chance to move at all; safely out of reach, she dives onto Monkey’s discarded cloak, still where he left it last night, and buries herself in the fabric, hiding from him and the rest of the world.

Tripitaka watches her go with a frown. It must seem very unlike her, Monkey supposes, to someone who doesn’t know what they’ve just been through, but he’s smart enough not to ask about it; recovering himself quickly, he turns to Monkey instead, dark eyes clouding over with worry as he lays eyes on him. He must look a terrible sight, bandaged and bent and smudged with dirt and blood; small wonder the monk looks just about ready to pass out.

“What in the world happened to you?” he asks in a high, tremulous voice. “You look like you’ve been through…”

He stops, shaking his head as though struck dumb.

Pigsy, still lolling lazily by the fire, lifts his head for the first time. He peers curiously at Monkey for a moment, glances at the dæmon-shaped lump in the cloak, then turns back to the flames with a grunt.

“They got in trouble,” he huffs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Which, all things considered, it probably is.

Monkey sighs. He doesn’t really want to have to field this one on his own, but a glance at the quivering cloak says that Sandy won’t be much help. Fair enough, really; she’s been through rather more than he has, and besides he kind of owes her one — or two, or three — for sticking her neck out to save his.

“It wasn’t our fault,” he says to Tripitaka, pointedly ignoring Pigsy. “I mean, of course it wasn’t _my_ fault. But it wasn’t hers either, for once.”

“For once,” Tripitaka echoes, eyes narrowed. “Monkey…”

He waves an impatient hand, dismissing the point. “They snuck up on us,” he says. “Came out of nowhere. Cornered us, drugged us. Tied me up, stuck her in a cage…” He does look at Pigsy now, but only to glower at him. “You wouldn’t have fared any better, big guy, believe me.”

Tripitaka’s frown only deepens. His eyes are fixed on the humans’ unnatural weapon, still in Monkey’s hand, confusion mingling with horror on his face. Monkey can’t tell if he recognises the thing or not, if he understands what it does, or if he’s simply sickened in the way of all monks at the sight of a dæmon wielding a weapon.

Hard to say for sure — Tripitaka is elusive at the best of times, unusually hard to read even for a dæmonless human — and Monkey doesn’t really know how much he should say about the thing. He’s not exactly an expert himself, knowing only as much as he could glean from Sandy’s panic and her fractured memories, and he’s not sure that’s enough to make this into a conversation. 

He hands the thing over, though, pleased to be rid of it. Even just touching it is enough to send pulses of discomfort all the way through him. He doesn’t realise how bad it was until he’s free of it, until his lungs expand and he finds that he can breathe again.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Tripitaka says in a soft, thoughtful voice.

And that answers that.

Monkey’s not sure whether to be relieved by his ignorance or not. It means more unwanted explanations, true, but at least he knows for certain now that Tripitaka is sincerely innocent, that he really doesn’t know how far his fellow humans have gone to destroy their dæmons.

Pigsy, meanwhile, is suddenly very attentive and uncharacteristically sober. “I have,” he says, deathly quiet.

Monkey wets his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He lumbers his way over to them, brow furrowing with seriousness. “They were going to use this?”

“That was the plan.” Even just saying it makes his knees go weak; he tries to muster a flicker of bravado, but it doesn’t reach his eyes or his voice. “Not that it would’ve worked. As far as I understand it, anyway. I’m not…” He clenches his teeth, glances grudgingly at Sandy, still shivering under her cloak. “I don’t know. I’d never seen one before either. Sandy, uh… she explained it to me. She… um… she knew.”

“She…?” Pigsy’s eyes widen with realisation, understanding. Monkey grimaces and quickly averts his gaze; it’s not his place to share this. “Oh, hells. She—”

“Don’t.” The pain in Monkey’s voice surprises all three of them. “I mean… just drop it, okay?”

Tripitaka, having no idea what they’re discussing, is typically focused on the least important part. “She actually _spoke_ to you?” he blurts out, voice rough with disbelief. “With _words_?”

“Not exactly.” Monkey sighs, flushing hot with shame and a strange protective instinct. “Look, it doesn’t matter, does it? Her stuff is hers. Don’t interrogate me about it.”

“Right.” Tripitaka glances at the cloak too, expression darkening with worry, though he wisely keeps any further questions to himself. “Of course. Sorry.”

Monkey nods, draws them all back to the more pressing issue. “What matters,” he says, voice and stomach heavy with nausea, “is what we’re going to do with this thing.”

“Destroy it,” Pigsy says, without hesitation. “Break it into pieces and toss it into the sea. Bury it in the middle of nowhere and set the ground on fire. Anything. Just get rid of it.”

Tripitaka turns it over in his hands, seemingly oblivious to the dæmons’ distress. Cautious, studious, a monk through and through; Monkey halfway expects he’d happily break it into pieces, but only so he could study them and then put it back together again. The thought fills him with a strange kind of dread, and before he even realises he’s doing it he’s taken a long step backwards, away from the weapon and the human wielding it with such carelessness, oblivious to the damage it’s capable of, the sick, twisted thing it was made to do.

“It’s quite beautiful,” the monk says after a quiet moment, then frowns as Monkey and Pigsy both react with horror. “What’s it for?”

Monkey looks at Pigsy, eyes wide in a silent plea to not have to say the words. He does not often admit weakness, but he will gladly do so now, if that’s what it takes for the other dæmon to take on the task himself. All of a sudden he wants nothing more than to be like Sandy, mute and dumb, to never speak again, to cast that weapon and its hellish powers out of his mind forever. He wants so badly to have never been part of this.

Seeming to sense all of that, or at least to understand his reticence, Pigsy nods and sits down, settling on his haunches and looking Tripitaka steadily in eye.

“It’s…” His voice cracks instantly; he takes a deep breath, swallows hard to steady himself, then tries again. “It severs the connection between a human and their dæmon. Cuts them apart, and if they survive…” The weight on the word makes it clear that’s a big ‘if’; Monkey thinks of Sandy, and aches all over. “…they’re separate. Disconnected, forever. A bodiless soul and a soulless body, and there’s nothing to be done for either of them.”

Tripitaka is deathly pale now. He’s still holding the thing, but he looks like he desperately wants to throw it away and scrub his hands clean. “That’s awful.”

“You could say that, yeah.” He swallows again, then presses on. “After word spread of what Monkey did…”

“Didn’t do,” Monkey corrects sharply. Apparently, even now, he can’t help but bristle at that. “I didn’t actually do anything.”

Pigsy rolls his eyes at the pedantry, but doesn’t argue. This is much too important to get bogged down in pettiness.

“After word spread of what Monkey _didn’t_ do,” he presses quietly, “people were desperate for ways to separate themselves from their dæmons. They were frightened, paranoid, obsessed. That thing, and others like it… they were the result.”

Tripitaka is still staring down at the weapon in his hands, numb and horrified but still, in spite of himself, a little bit hopeful. Monkey can see the wheels in his head turning, whispering stupid things like _study it_ and _learn from it_ and _make it into something better…_

“I’m with Pigsy,” Monkey says, cutting off those thoughts like a blow to the head. “We destroy it. Hunt down any others like it. Destroy those as well.”

But of course, trying to make a man of learning give up a source of fresh new knowledge is like trying to make Pigsy give up the last serving of stew at dinner. Even with all the common sense in the world, it’s never going to happen.

“It’s harmless,” Tripitaka says, speaking slowly. He understands how significant this is, the weight of its meaning to his dæmon companions; he knows the extent of what he’s asking, but still he can’t let slide an opportunity for learning. Even if that opportunity is as dark and cold as the hells themselves. “To you, anyway. None of you have humans of your own. There’s no connection to sever, nothing to cut away. No danger in keeping it. If anything, it’s safer with us than anywhere else in the world.”

Monkey glances at the cloak again, at the quivering little lump where Sandy is still hiding. “You should talk to her as well,” he says, with significance. “Not just us.”

“I will,” Tripitaka promises, seemingly oblivious to the deeper meaning. “But in the morning. You’re both exhausted, and…” His fingers flex, as though seeing for the first time Monkey’s bandaged side, the wound healed so generously by the humans who would have happily subjected him to a darker fate. “And hurt. Is there anything I can do…?”

He breaks off, looking suddenly unsure. And rightly so. No human should ever touch a dæmon not their own, not even to try and heal them. Tripitaka, being naturally tactile and so accustomed to calming and soothing Sandy with his hands, is clearly at a loss for what to do for a more normal dæmon. He wants to help, really and truly, but he also knows that Monkey would sooner die than be touched, even by him.

“No,” Monkey says, inching back from the well-meaning monk before his instincts can overpower his reason. “And definitely not while you’ve got that thing in your hands. If you really want to keep it, you better put it somewhere safe.” He glances again at Sandy’s cloak, chest tightening. “And keep it far away from her. You understand, human?”

He doesn’t. That much is readily apparent. But he can hear the weight in Monkey’s choice of words, ‘human’ where he would normally say ‘monk’, and he can tell that it’s important somehow.

Nodding respectfully, he says, “Is she okay? Did they hurt her too?”

There are a few different answers to that, and Monkey doesn’t feel like it’s his place to give any of them. It’s deeply personal, what Sandy shared with him, and he has no right to spread those secrets around like so much cheap gossip. Even to the one human he knows she trusts completely. Let her share it with him if she wishes, or keep it to herself if the pain cuts too deep; either way, the choice is hers to make, and Monkey will not take it away from her.

He mulls it over for a moment, tries to find the safest middle ground, honesty without too much detail.

“She took a couple of those drugged arrows,” he says at last, very carefully. “But I don’t know how much damage they did. She was in her sewer-monster form. You know, the one with all the armoured scales and the really sharp teeth.” He tries to grin, but it’s weak and watery and doesn’t have much effect. “Told you there was no reason to worry about her. She saved my neck. Twice, at least.”

Tripitaka blinks, looking almost stunned. “She did?”

“Yeah.” He rolls his aching shoulder, wincing at the burst of pain; he hopes, in spite of himself, that Sandy is faring better than he is. “She’s a tough little thing. I… I got her all wrong.”

The monk doesn’t need to know more than that, and even if he does Monkey won’t be the one to say it.

Thankfully, he doesn’t press. Observant and shrewd as always, he seems to recognise that his questions are no longer welcome, and switches tack with all the tactful grace of a real holy man. Not for the first time, Monkey thinks of the Master, his patience and his gentle acceptance of things that were not his to know, and it takes some effort to keep his vision from blurring.

“Okay,” Tripitaka says after a quiet moment, and the softness of his voice brushes against Monkey’s soft heart like the press of fingertips, a kind of contact that doesn’t make him feel sick. “I’ll talk to her in the morning.”

So saying, he turns his face away, back towards the fire.

But his hands linger in the space between their bodies, fingers still flexing with uncertainty, a physical echo of the emotional contact Monkey still feels on his heart, like he wants so badly to reach out and offer comfort in the only way he knows how, like he wants so badly to tend Monkey the same way he would Sandy but realises that he can’t.

Monkey is grateful for his understanding. But at the same time, watching the way his human skin catches the firelight, thinking of Sandy and the strange comfort she finds in touching it, Monkey wonders, for perhaps the first time in his life, if maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

*

He sleeps poorly again that night.

It’s to be expected, of course, after what he’s been through, but that doesn’t mean it’s welcome. He lies awake for what feels like hours, tossing and turning long after Tripitaka and Pigsy have rolled over and fallen asleep, distracted by the pain still throbbing in his side, by the lingering echo of Sandy’s memory, by everything he’s been through, everything he’s felt and learned and wishes he hadn’t.

A weapon to cut dæmons away from their humans, to rend the soul from the body, to carve out the most important, the most precious parts of a person. He doesn’t need to be asleep to feel the cold sweat of nightmare-fear clenching like fists all around him.

He doesn’t expect to feel it as viscerally as he does, dread for something he knows will never affect him. He was born as he is, whole and complete; he’s never known how it feels to be connected to a human in that way, to have a body bound to his soul. It shouldn’t make him feel as helpless as it does, the idea of being severed, not when he’s never had a body to be severed from.

And yet here he is, shivering and sweating at the thought of it, nausea thick on his tongue, rancid and rotting.

It takes him a long time to push the feeling down, to will his frightened mind into remembering that it will never take him, that it cannot, that he is whole and complete and will never know what it feels like to—

To—

He sits up, shuddering.

Sweat-soaked and sickened, he looks around, panic gripping his throat, smothering a scream in the moment before he sees it, that cursed weapon, safe and sound in Tripitaka’s arms as he sleeps.

Safe.

It won’t hurt anyone else. Not while it’s in Tripitaka’s care.

 _Safe_.

He takes a deep breath, letting the word reverberate inside his head, bouncing off the walls of his mind until it finds purchase, until he convinces himself it’s true. Only then does he let himself relax, lying down and trying to breathe, catching the stillness of the air, the world around him no different than it was before, unchanged—

 _Almost_.

He senses it before he understands it, a prickling sensation at the edge of his awareness. A presence, like a predator lurking in the shadows, watching and waiting and—

Oh. Right.

 _Her_.

Again.

It’s obvious, now that he thinks about it. If he’s this distressed by something that will never harm him, he can hardly even imagine how Sandy must be feeling right now, reliving the horrors she did, knowing exactly what it feels like to be cut, to be torn away, to be _severed_ —

Her eyes seem to flash in the dark, preternaturally pale and unblinking, peering out from underneath the cloak like she’s waiting for something, waiting for him to—

 _Oh_.

Monkey groans.

He doesn’t sit up, but he does shuffle back a bit, opening up his arms and his body in a grudging invitation. Annoying, perhaps, but not even he is so heartless as to turn her away in a moment like this.

“Come on,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. “Get over here, if you’re going to.”

A long silence as she hesitates, nothing but the wind in the trees. And then—

Then, quick as a blink, she barrels into his chest, a shivering little ball of rat-fur and a cacophony of frenzied, frightened squeaks.

Monkey does not smile. But he does not tell her to shut up either.

He expects her presence to irritate him, to amplify the ache in his side where the arrow went in, but her rodent body is warm and soft against the still-healing wound, and it offers a strange kind of comfort, contact in a way Monkey hasn’t really been able to indulge since he came out of the rock.

Perhaps he should have. It’s been so much of a challenge, adjusting to this new world and the strange, surreal dæmons that live in it. Pigsy is mostly normal, but he’s not the kind of dæmon Monkey would feel comfortable curling up with on a cold night, and Sandy… well. This is the first time he’s felt comfortable in her presence at all, much less comfortable enough to touch her.

It’s surprisingly simple, surprisingly soothing. There is no fear or shame in contact between dæmons just as there is no shame in contact between humans; it is simply a part of their being. Still, though, before tonight, he couldn’t have imagined taking comfort in it like this, and especially not from _her_.

But here they are just the same, Sandy’s furry little form trembling against his own, seeking as much warmth as she gives, and Monkey taking and offering comfort in turn. Communication, physical and tangible and sweetly simple; he thinks back to last night — his anger and his fear, the nightmare sticking inside his head, the way he shouted at her to go away, to become more _normal_ — and he can hardly believe the difference.

She doesn’t speak. Still can’t, and all the more so after what they’ve been through. But this time Monkey understands, and he does not push her or shout at her or demand that she become something she’s not, something more than she can be.

He just holds her, cradles her to his chest with the arm that isn’t sore, lets her warm body press against the parts of him that still hurt, lets her presence grant him the comfort he has refused himself for so long, the comfort he will never allow himself to seek in humans. Lets her draw comfort, as well, in being touched by one of her own kind, maybe for the first time in her life.

Neither one of them have a human of their own, neither has any reason to be scared of the weapon clutched so tightly to their little monk’s chest; one of them lost their connection long ago, the other never had one at all. There is no threat, no danger, just as Tripitaka said. And yet here they are, both shivering, both wide awake in the dead of night, touching each other because they are both afraid to touch the human that brought meaning to their lives.

For Sandy, it is a new thing, being scared of touching the one person who has always brought her comfort before. And it is new for Monkey as well, if in a different way: not the fear, but the desire.

For the first time since the Master, he finds that he actually wants to touch a human, to touch Tripitaka, to become a part of something he has always believed was not meant for him. He has seen the way the monk’s touches speak to Sandy, a language he himself has all but forgotten, and a part of him — stuttering, scared, small but growing — wants to share it too.

So much of this new world, it seems, has dedicated itself to rejecting him, destroying everything he is: his name, his identity, his existence. Would it really be such a terrible thing, to seek out comfort in the only human who has shown faith in him here? Surely it couldn’t hurt more, being touched by someone he trusts than by those twisted barbarians who would bind his wounds and then his limbs without his consent.

Maybe not. No, certainly not. Tripitaka’s intentions are pure and kind; Monkey knows that there is nothing to fear in touching him.

But the thought still terrifies him just the same.

And so, instead, he holds Sandy. Hugs her little form close to his chest, lets her find peace and purchase there, comfort of a sort that he understands, in sharing warmth with his own kind. It is new to her, but as old and familiar to him as breathing.

And he teaches her what it is to be a dæmon, to be touched by another dæmon, and she teaches him what it is to be warm and to find comfort and communication in those points of contact, to be connected in a way that doesn’t involve speaking or listening or words.

Neither of them sleep well, both plagued by nightmares and memories. But they do not dream alone, and they do not wake to loneliness or isolation or fear; they wake to each other, both trembling, both terrified, but both of them together, two dæmons as strange and wrong as each other, each learning in their own way how to find comfort in this world that would reject and destroy them both.

It’s not enough to get them through what is still to come, that great wide world full of humans and weapons and hate, rejection and destruction and the poisoning of everything that was once held sacred. It’s not enough to prepare them for all of that, the trials and tribulations that they will have to face to see their mission done.

But it is enough to get them through the night.

And, after the day they’ve just had, that’s a damn good start.

*

Monkey wakes in the morning, stiff and sore and alone.

He’s sprawled out on his back, arms splayed, and he touches a hand instinctively to his chest as he crawls back to consciousness, reaching almost without thought for Sandy’s little body. She’s not there, though, apparently having left him to his rest and scurried off some time ago. When he sits up and looks around, she’s nowhere to be seen.

The brief twinge of disappointment, he will deny until his dying day.

Pigsy is missing as well; a quick glance around their campsite reveals only Tripitaka. He looks calm enough, though, sitting quietly by the fire and gazing into the flames, so Monkey casts aside his fears of foul play.

Tripitaka still has the humans’ weapon. It sits on the ground by his side, discarded but within easy reach, like it’s no more unusual than a staff or a sword or a sai. Monkey’s stomach lurches at the sight of it, and he has to bite down hard on the urge to dive on the damn thing and hurl it as hard and as far as he can. It’s no less of a horror now that he’s got some rest.

He clears his throat as he sits up, cocks his head at the hellish thing, and quips, without so much as a ‘good morning’, “Did you scare them off with that thing?”

Tripitaka jolts a little, then musters a wan chuckle. Looking at the lines on his face, deeper and darker than they were last night, Monkey suspects he didn’t sleep much better than the rest of them. He looks pale and drained, and there is a weary sort of weight in his voice when he speaks.

“Pigsy’s foraging for breakfast,” he explains, still gazing dull-eyed at the fire. “And Sandy went for a swim in the river.”

Monkey’s chest gives an involuntary kick at that last part, ribs squeezing his lungs, his heart against his will. He’s not worried, dammit. But after the last time…

“You let her go alone?” he blurts out, then catches himself and dials it down. “I mean, not that I _care_. But she already got in trouble once, wandering off like that. If I were you, I’d never let the little pest out of my sight again.”

“She’s a grown dæmon,” Tripitaka points out, sounding a little hollow. “I’m not her human, and I’m not her mo— her _father_. If she wants to wander off, who am I to tell her not to?”

Monkey scowls, but can’t exactly argue. Still, his heart won’t stop hammering at his ribs and it makes the wound in his side throb. Annoyance, he decides, definitely not worry, and he clambers stiffly to his feet to distract himself.

“Fine,” he huffs, dusting himself down and hoping he sounds suitably put out. “ _I’ll_ tell her not to.”

He spins on his heel, readying to storm off and do exactly that — to yell at her, he tells himself, and absolutely, definitely not to check and make sure she’s okay — when Tripitaka leaps up to his feet.

“Wait,” he says, awkward but with quiet urgency. “Can we talk first?”

Monkey frowns, sensing something foreboding in the way the little monk’s eyes grow dark, the way his face gets closed off and intense, the way he’s staring at him like he doesn’t know him at all.

“Look,” he says, instantly defensive, “I told you, it wasn’t my fault…”

“I know,” Tripitaka says, coughing hastily. “She told me about it.”

Monkey doesn’t even try to cover up his surprise. “Did she?”

“Yeah.” He’s wringing his hands in front of him, like he’s fumbling uncharacteristically for words. “I mean, not everything, but some of it. As much as she could, I think. She’s not… well, you know. She doesn’t communicate very well. Just bits and pieces, most of the time, and I don’t always know what she means.”

That’s actually rather comforting; Monkey has always assumed he’s the only one who struggles to interpret what the mute dæmon has to say for herself. Still, he doesn’t want to give away anything that Sandy hasn’t shared herself, so he settles for a shrug and a noncommittal, “Right.”

Tripitaka nods. “She said that you apologised. That you tried to make things right with her, before you got caught. And she said that you…”

He trails off, looking even more uncomfortable than he did a moment ago. It’s not a good look, and it makes Monkey’s stomach clench a little.

He leans in, studying his face as best he can, trying to make sense of the human strangeness, the nuance of expression that is so alien to him, so many emotions on a single face with no dæmon soul to make them more coherent. It’s like trying to decipher a language he doesn’t speak, only vaguely familiar with the letters and none of the words, like he has a nascent awareness of what he should be seeing but lacks the ability to put the parts together in the right order.

“What?” he presses at last, frustration boiling over to sharpen his tone. “She said I did _what_?”

Tripitaka doesn’t immediately answer. Typical monk — typical human, really, evasive and annoying — he instead turns instead back to the fire, sitting back down where he was before and waving for Monkey to join him.

Monkey considers ignoring the invitation entirely, just to be stubborn, but he still feels drawn to Tripitaka, the little monk with the big heart who brought him out of the rock to help save the world. There’s a connection between them, not unlike the one Tripitaka seems to share with Sandy, not as a dæmon to their human but as a lost, wayward soul to the body who gave it meaning and purpose. It bothers him, even now, how much alike they are, him and Sandy, in the way they experience the world. 

And so, because it’s Tripitaka, he sighs and gives in. He settles into a crouch on the opposite side of the fire, indulging his simian body and its habits in a way he usually avoids in the company of humans; he has worked hard to mimic them, to become like them, but after what happened yesterday he is vividly, intensely aware of the differences between himself and Tripitaka, human and dæmon, and he is not nearly as comfortable as he once was, pretending that they’re similar.

Watching him steadily, Tripitaka nods and reaches into his belt-pouch. He pulls out a small pot of something so foul-smelling that even from the other side of the fire Monkey has to wrinkle his nose, and holds it up to the light.

“Here,” he says, sliding it carefully across to where Monkey is crouching.

Monkey picks it up with a frown, studying it from all angles, trying without success to understand its purpose. “Is it meant to smell like that?”

Tripitaka smiles. “It’s a salve. I made it for Sandy after you…” He turns away, clearing his throat as Monkey’s face burns hot with shame. “Well, you know. And after what happened yesterday, I thought…” He gestures, inarticulate and uncharacteristically vague. “She lets me put it on her wounds. And I thought you might… that is, I know you don’t… I know it’s taboo for you, for…”

“For _normal_ dæmons,” Monkey fills in. It feels needlessly spiteful now, though, after what he’s learned, and he regrets his harsh tone almost instantly. “For dæmons not like _her_.”

“For dæmons who remember the old world,” Tripitaka concedes, with impressive tact. “I know it’s a problem for you. So I won’t offer to… to do it for you. But I thought it… that is, it’s there if you need it. Just apply a little to wherever it’s sore. It should help.”

Monkey hums thoughtfully, turning the little pot over in his hands. “That’s very considerate of you,” he says, and he’s not just talking about the salve.

He’s feeling too exposed and self-conscious to try it out right now, so he settles for grunting his appreciation and putting it aside for later. Watching him from the other side of the fire, Tripitaka’s expression softens; he looks almost like he’s seeing Monkey for the very first time, or else like he’s recognising something in him that he hadn’t seen before, something new, something almost worthy.

Monkey doesn’t know how to feel about that. He folds his arms across his chest, wincing only a little when it tugs on his wound, and meets the monk’s eye, steady and unflinching.

Tripitaka takes a breath, drawing strength from Monkey’s gaze, and presses on, finally finding the courage to finish the thought he abandoned before.

“I heard,” he says, slowly and carefully, like he’s navigating stormy seas, “that you showed great restraint in dealing with the humans who captured you.”

That’s news to Monkey. He only remembers being angry, being upset, being in pain and frustrated and just a little bit frightened. He definitely doesn’t remember showing restraint, and he lets the confusion show through on his face.

“Wouldn’t say that,” he says cautiously. “But it’s hard to do anything reckless or stupid when you’re drugged and tied to a rock.”

He sneers as he says it, making it quite clear that he would have gladly been reckless or stupid or both, if he’d only been given an opening. Tripitaka isn’t buying it, though, and the compassion on his face makes Monkey’s hackles rise.

“Not that,” the monk says, infuriatingly gentle. “Afterwards, when you got free. Sandy, she… she wouldn’t say much, but she did say that you stopped her from doing something… regrettable.”

‘Regrettable’. Monkey actually laughs at that.

“If you mean ‘killing those bastards and gnawing on their bones’,” he quips, taking a twisted sort of joy in the way it makes Tripitaka blanch. “Yeah, I’d say ‘regrettable’ just about covers it.”

He doesn’t mention the part where she had a damn good reason, where a part of him wanted to just sit back and let it happen. The monk is already pale and upset; he wouldn’t want to make the poor thing pass out.

“She didn’t share the details,” Tripitaka says quietly. “I suppose that’s why.”

“That, or it was too many big words.” He shrugs. “Whatever. It wasn’t a big deal. She wasn’t thinking straight, I was. And I…” His breath stutters unexpectedly in his chest. “I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

It’s hard to make sense of the look on Tripitaka’s face. Not for the first time, Monkey finds himself wishing that the stubborn little monk had a dæmon of his own, his soul made manifest to show the nuances of expression and feeling that his human features cannot. He feels almost deaf trying to communicate this way, trying to fathom the unfathomable, like Sandy, swimming in water, unable to make herself understood.

Finally, blinking away the strange look, Tripitaka sighs and says, “Thank you. I know Sandy is… I know she can be difficult.”

That’s an understatement, of course, but this time Monkey doesn’t laugh or roll his eyes or reach for an insult. His eyes are stinging a bit, like they’ve caught a fleck of ash from the fire, and when he tries to find his voice, his throat is sore and strangely tight.

“She’s not so bad,” he manages hoarsely. “I mean, I think I understand her a bit better now. The way she is, you know? She’s pretty messed up, but that… that’s what being in this stupid world does, isn’t it? It takes what’s pure and perfect, and twists it into something sick, something unnatural. It destroys everything that’s beautiful, everything that’s good and pure. It cuts it away and tears it apart, until the only thing left is messed up and broken and wrong, and it… and _she_ …”

His voice, traitorous bastard that it is, cracks and then shatters. He doesn’t try to finish.

Tripitaka doesn’t need to hear it, though. Whether he realises the truth or not, the tearful look on his face says that he understands enough. Monkey doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or simply heartbroken.

“We can’t become like that,” Tripitaka says in a whisper. “Do you understand now? We can’t become the sorts of people who would make the world like this. We have to be better than that. We have to nurture, we have to nourish, we…” He swallows, then squares his shoulders and presses tightly on. “We need to protect what few dæmons are still alive. We need to teach them mercy and patience, to temper their anger and their pain.”

“They have every reason to be angry,” Monkey says quietly. “Because they _are_ in pain. What the humans of this world think and feel… what they do…”

He shakes his head. He won’t give it the dignity of being said.

“I know.” Tripitaka bows his head, seeming to take the burden of hate onto his own shoulders as well. “We need to teach the humans, too, to be more like the ones from your world. To love and respect their dæmons, to feed their souls instead of fearing them. We need to teach them compassion and understanding. And we need to show them kindness.”

Monkey thinks of Pigsy, rejected bust still connected, bound to a human who hated him until the day she died and finally set him free. And he thinks of Sandy, abandoned in the most unspeakable way, cut away and then tossed aside, _discarded_ —

“Why?” His voice is shaking. “I should have let her kill those bastards for what they wanted to do to us. Humans like that, they don’t deserve kindness or compassion. And they definitely don’t deserve dæmons.”

“You’re right,” Tripitaka says, with sorrow and patience. “They don’t. But if we don’t teach them to be better, they never will.”

Monkey ponders that. A part of him, bigger than he’d care to admit, thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing thing, that maybe there is nothing worth saving in the humans of this world, these twisted creatures who are blind and so depraved, who would destroy the one good part of themselves and never even miss it.

But then another part of him, smaller but much gentler, thinks again of Sandy, and of the human that was severed from her.

A newborn infant, nothing more, just as delicate and fragile as she was. Born with his eyes closed, with his dæmon in his arms, life blooming within and without, as beautiful as anything the world had ever known. Sandy wasn’t the only one severed, Monkey knows; that poor baby suffered too, separated from his soul, left empty as she was torn away forever. Human, yes, but innocent; whatever he became, the fault was not his. He didn’t deserve it any more than she did.

That’s what Tripitaka means, Monkey realises now. Humans and dæmons, even severed and separate, are still two parts of the same being; he can’t expect to save one if he’s not willing to save the other as well. If he wants to make this nightmare of a world safe for dæmons again, he needs to make it a better place for humans as well. And that requires compassion, it requires patience and kindness, it requires all the things Tripitaka talks about so earnestly, with so much passion and such breathtaking faith.

Monkey closes his eyes, lets the pain and the anger wash over him. Takes a moment to grieve, to hurt, to suffer, and then catches his breath and looks down into Tripitaka’s young, hopeful face.

“They need to see,” he whispers. “They need to see all the beautiful things they’re trying to destroy. If they don’t see, they’ll never understand.”

Tripitaka smiles; it seems for a moment to light up the world, to bathe it in colourless beauty. “They need help,” he says. “They don’t realise it, but they do. That’s what our mission needs to be.”

Monkey nods. Reluctant, but with understanding. “Peace and love,” he breathes. “Like you keep talking about.”

Tripitaka bows his head again, reverent and regretful all at once; he knows how steep the price is for walking this path, but he knows, far better than Monkey, that they cannot stray from it.

“It’s all we have,” he says, and turns back to tend the flames.

Watching him, watching the light flicker behind his dark eyes, Monkey is suddenly very glad that they’re on opposite sides of the fire, the embers dancing and sparking hot between them.

If they weren’t, he’s sure he would have reached for his hand.

*

It is some time before Sandy rejoins them.

She’s in her otter form when she returns, bounding back into camp like she never left, with only a slight limp on her wounded side. She cocks her head at Tripitaka, then at Monkey, as if in greeting, then darts past them, dives onto Monkey’s cloak, and shifts gracefully into a water snake.

Tripitaka watches her as she curls up to rest, fondness reflected in his eyes from the campfire. “Welcome back,” he says, in a voice as warm as the sun.

Monkey, watching them both, feels a strange sort of pressure bearing down on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Fondness too, possibly, but it takes a different shape in him to what he sees in Tripitaka. A monk’s faith in human eyes, soulful softness shining in a body with no soul of its own, a body that has spent its short life trying to cultivate one. But in a bodiless dæmon like Monkey, that faith has no place to plant its roots, nothing to hold to. He doesn’t know what to do with it, only knows that it is the most powerful thing he has ever felt.

After a few moments, Tripitaka turns back to him. Monkey expects the fondness to fade, but it doesn’t; he cares for them both, it seems, just as deeply as each other.

“I think she’s decided that your cloak is hers,” he says with a smile. “Maybe we should let her keep it.”

Monkey snorts a laugh at that. “Like she’d let you ‘let’ her,” he shoots back, gesturing at the drowsy, sun-warmed dæmon. “Just try getting her off the stupid thing.”

Tripitaka shakes his head, chuckling wryly. “Monkey…”

Thrown by his tone, Monkey only frowns. Then, in a lightning-bolt of clarity that makes his throat go dry and his eyes start to sting, he gets it. What Tripitaka is trying to say, what he’s trying to _offer_.

“You…” He swallows hard, wondering if he can blame the hoarseness on allergies. “You’re saying I don’t have to wear it any more.”

Tripitaka’s smile grows softer, sweeter. For a moment, it seems almost as colourful as a dæmon’s aura.

“I’m saying you don’t have to wear it any more,” he affirms. “You were right. The humans of this world will never learn acceptance if they don’t know what they’re dealing with. And even if that wasn’t the case, you…” His voice hitches, and all of a sudden he sounds hoarse too. “You deserve to be yourself, Monkey. Whatever it means to you.”

Monkey’s throat is so tight, he’s not sure he can speak. Which is probably for the best, as he doesn’t know what to say.

‘Thank you’, is the obvious choice, but that is such a strange-tasting phrase. He’s not sure he’s ever said it before, and he doesn’t know that now is the right time to test how it fits on his tongue. He’s not really used to feeling touched or grateful at all, not used to feeling this deeply for anyone except the Master; he has never met a monk who feels as deeply or as strongly as Tripitaka does, a monk who is so willing to share those feelings, to broadcast them to the whole world, to let them shine and shine and shine.

The Master was much more subdued. He kept his feelings to himself, and because Monkey wasn’t his dæmon in truth he didn’t know how to read the ones he didn’t admit to. They weren’t connected; he couldn’t sense his emotions or his thoughts, could only hope that one day they would share a bond deep enough that the Master would share them by choice. And perhaps it might have turned out that way, if fate hadn’t taken its twisted turn, if the world hadn’t torn them away from each other, if they hadn’t—

Monkey closes his eyes, driving back the memories with a great effort.

“Huh,” he says to Tripitaka, tongue thick in his mouth. “Glad you’re finally seeing some sense.”

It’s not what he intended to say, but Tripitaka’s smile widens even so.

Still sunning herself on Monkey’s cloak — _her_ cloak — Sandy lifts her head to study them. Her silver-black scales seem to gleam in the sunlight, wet from the river and growing warm; privately, Monkey thinks that form fits her well. Graceful and surprisingly elegant, she looks entirely at home, and — in spite of everything she’s been through — happier than he’s ever seen her.

Tripitaka meets her eye, beaming brightly for a moment, features soft with affection. He tilts his head to one side, as though listening to some unvoiced question, then laughs and shakes his head.

“Yeah,” he tells her, voice rich and warm. “We’re good now. Everything’s good.”

And Sandy tilts her head too, a gleaming mirror of the monk who means so much to her, and she breathes in deep, the severed dæmon with no human and no form and no voice—

And she opens her mouth, trembling from her head to her tail—

And she whispers, breathless and halting and impossible, “ _Good_.”

And Monkey, staring at her with tears in eyes and sorrow in his heart, thinks he’s never heard a more beautiful word in his life.

**

 


End file.
